EDWARD  EGGLESTON,   IN   1897 

From  an   oil    painting   by  Irving   R.  Wiles,  on  the  walls  of 
The  Authors  Club,    New  York 


The 

First  of  the  Hoosiers 


Reminiscences  of 
EDWARD  EGGLESTON 

And  of  that  Western  life 
which  he,  first  of  all  men, 
celebrated  in  literature  and 
made  famous.  &  jgi 


GEORGE7  GARY 
E  G  G  L  E  vS  T  O  N 


Author  of  "A  Rebel  s  Recollections," 
"American  Immortals/'  "A  Carolina 
Cavalier,"  "Dorothy  South"  "The 
Master  oi  Warlock,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 


DRBXEL 
Publisher      A 


RIDDLE 

Philadelphia 


COPYRIGHT  1903 
BY 

A.    J.    DREXEL    BIDDLE 

PHILADELPHIA 


ALL.    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


The  Drexel  Biddlc  Press,  Philadelphia 


to!)o  lobcfc 

—  not  to 
one  ot  t^em,  but  to   all— 
lietiicate  tji0  tribute  to 
memory   &&&& 


Carp  OBggIe0ton 


on  lla&e 
September,  1003* 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     The  Author's  Commission     .         .  9 

II     A    Little   Love    Story    and    Other 

Matters  ,         17 

III  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster's   First 

School  .....         28 

IV  Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern 

Indiana .         .         .  .         52 

V     In  the  Real  Backwoods        .         .  '       77 

VI     The  Environment  of  the    Hoosier 

Boy 107 

VII  Madison  and  New  Conditions  .  129 

VIII  Two  Great  Educators.         .  .  140 

IX  The  Formative  Period           .  .  169 

X  The  Virginian  Influence       .  ;  189 

XI  Some  Revelations  of  Character  .  221 

XII  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster's 
Theory  and  Practice  of 
Teaching  .  .  .  •  243 

XIII     A  Pair  of  Young  Tramps    .         .      255 

S 


550893 


Contents    (continued) 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIV     The  Wander  Year       .         .       "  ."  261 

XV     The     Story     of     "The     Hoosier 

Schoolmaster"        .         .         .  277 

XVI     The  Minnesota  Preacher      .       .  *  305 

XVII     The  Editor  and  the  Man  of  Let 
ters        313 

XVIII     The  First  of  Authorship       .         .  340 

XIX     The  Christian  Endeavor  Episode    .  350 

XX     The   Historical  Work  of  Twenty 

Years     .         .         .         .         .  358 

XXI     The  Light  Goes  Out  .  .371 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Edward  Eggleston,  in  1897          .          .   Frontispiece 

From  an  oil  painting  by  Irving  R.  Wiles,  on  the  walls  of  the 
Authors  Club,  New  York. 

The  Birth  Place  of  Edward   Eggleston,  in 

Vevay,  Indiana    ...  26 

Old  Schoolhouse  in  Vevay— still  standing    .  52 

Edward  Eggleston,  in  1857  78 

Clifty  Falls,  near  Madison,  Indiana     .          .  104 

A  favorite  haunt  of  Edward  Eggleston. 

The  Railroad  Cut  near  Madison,  Indiana  .  130 

Edward  Eggleston,  in  1865         .         .         .  158 

On  the  North  Madison  Road    .        >         .  184 

The  Hanging   Rock,   near  Madison,  Ind.,  212 

A  favorite  haunt  of  Edward  Eggleston  from  boyhood  to  old 
age. 

Edward    Eggleston's    House  in    Evanston, 

Illinois — now  destroyed  .         .        . .  238 

Edward  Eggleston,  in  1875  .         .         .  266 

Edward  Eggleston,  in  1896  ...  294 

From  a  photograph  made  in  the  Century  Club,  New  York. 

Edward  Eggleston,  in  Madison,  Indiana, 

January,  1899  .  .  332 

Edward  Eggleston,  from  a  photograph  made 

in  Washington,  1901  .  .  .  358 

7 


CHAPTER  I. 

The  Author's  Commission. 

|HIS  is  a  book  about  Edward  Eg- 
gleston;  about  the  people,  great 
and  small  with  whom  he  held  close 
relations  during  a  life  of  singu 
larly  varied  activity;  about  the  things  that 
interested  him,  the  causes  in  which  his 
superb  enthusiasm  was  enlisted,  the  work 
he  did  in  the  world,  the  spirit  in  which  he 
did  it,  and  other  matters  that  connect  them 
selves  with  him  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
knew  him  best. 

It  is  not  a  biography,  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  that  term,  though  it  relates  all  of 
fact  concerning  the  life  of  its  subject,  that 
a  formal  biography  would  include.  It  is 
rather  a  study  of  the  man,  his  work,  and  his 
surroundings  at  various  periods  of  his  life,  as 
these  things  are  remembered  by  the  author. 

9 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

One  day  in  the  early  summer  of  1902, 
after  Edward  began  fully  to  realize,  as  his 
physicians  did  not,  that  the  end  of  his  life 
was  drawing  near,  he  somewhat  painfully 
made  his  way  through  the  woodlands,  from 
his  Lake  George  Cottage  to  mine — a  few 
hundred  yards  distant — and  for  the  last 
time  in  his  life  sat  down  in  my  porch.  He 
was  extremely  feeble,  I  remember;  it  was 
painful  for  him  to  walk,  and  even  rising 
from  a  chair  or  seating  himself  in  one  was  a 
matter  of  some  difficulty.  But  his  life  long 
cheerfulness  of  spirit  endured,  and  he  faced 
death  with  a  calm  mind  and  quite  uncom 
plainingly.  A  year  or  two  before  the  visit 
of  which  I  am  now  writing  he  had  been 
stricken  in  a  way  that  threatened  his  early 
end,  and  writing  to  me  of  the  fact  he  had 
said: 

"I  am  content  and  happy.  I  have  had 
a  life  of  enjoyable  activity.  I  have  been  per 
mitted  to  render  some  service  to  my  genera 
tion.  I  have  lived.  If  the  end  is  near  I  have 
10 


The      Author's      Commission 

neither  reason  nor  disposition  to  complain. 
On  the  contrary,  I  shall  be  happy  to  the 
end  and  in  the  end." 

As  he  sat  there  in  my  porch  on  the 
occasion  of  his  last  visit,  looking  out  upon 
the  calmly  beautiful  bay,  he  turned  to  me 
and  said : 

"  Geordie  " — he  always  had  a  pet  name 
for  every  one  whom  he  loved,  and  from 
boyhood  this  had  been  his  pet  name  for  me 
—"Geordie,  after  I  die  some  of  the  pub 
lishers  may  want  to  print  a  little  book  about 
me.  If  they  do,  I  want  you  to  write  the 
book.  You  are  the  only  person  living  who 
has  known  me  all  my  life,  and  you  have 
known  me  with  a  degree  of  sympathetic 
intimacy  impossible  to  any  other.  You  have 
known  all  my  purposes  and  plans  and  ambi 
tions;  you  have  shared  many  of  them  and 
you  have  understood  even  those  that  you 
did  not  share.  We  were  little  children  to 
gether,  boys  together,  young  men  together, 
men  of  middle  age  together,  and  now  we 
11 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

are  growing  old  together.  Another  thing: 
in  pretty  nearly  every  article  that  has  ever 
been  written  concerning  me  there  have  been 
mistakes  made  and  misapprehensions,  until 
many  persons  who  know  me  only  through 
my  writings,  actually  think  I  was  born  in 
poverty  and  reared  in  an  ignorance  like  that 
of  the  characters  in  u  The  Hoosier  School 
master," — an  ignorance  from  which  I  am 
supposed  to  have  escaped  by  my  own  exer 
tions.  If  you  write  of  me  you  will  correct 
all  that.  Anyhow,  I  want  you  to  write  the 
book  if  any  book  is  to  be  written." 

Thus  1  received  the  commission  which 
I  here  endeavor  lovingly  to  fulfil.  In  doing 
so  I  shall  not  closely  follow  any  preconceived 
order  of  narrative  or  comment.  Where  the 
mention  of  matters  connected  with  one  part 
of  Edward  Eggleston's  life  brings  to  my 
mind  interesting  matters  relating  to  any 
other  part  of  it,  I  shall  not  hesitate  to  make 
the  transition  for  the  sake  of  a  better  and 
truer  unity  than  any  that  a  rigid  adherence 

12 


The       Author's       Commission 

to  the  chronological  order  could  possibly 
secure. 

On  the  title  page  of  this  volume  I  call 
my  brother  "The  First  of  the  Hoosiers." 
I  do  so  because  he  was  the  very  first  to  per 
ceive  and  utilize  in  literature  the  picturesque- 
ness  of  the  Hoosier  life  and  character,  the 
first  to  appreciate  the  poetic  and  romantic 
possibilities  of  that  life  and  to  invite  others 
to  share  with  him  his  enjoyment  of  its 
humor  and  his  admiration  for  its  sturdy 
manliness. 

Other  men  of  rare  literary  gifts  have 
followed  in  his  footsteps  in  this  richly  flower 
ing  field,  but  he  was  the  first  to  venture 
upon  it.  He  was  the  pathfinder.  Until  he 
wrote  "  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,"  and 
moved  the  readers  of  more  than  one  nation 
to  laughter  and  tears,  nobody  had  ever  made 
the  smallest  attempt  to  turn  the  Hoosier  life 
and  character  to  any  artistic  account. 

He  selected  that  field  for  his  work  in 
fiction  with  deliberation  and  earnest  convic- 
13 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

tion.  He  reminded  me  at  the  time  that  the 
Dutch  painters  never  produced  anything  of 
value  in  art  until  they  ceased  to  go  to  Italy 
for  their  subjects  and  began  to  paint  their 
own  homely  Dutch  interiors  and  landscapes 
and  people  instead.  It  was  his  fixed  convic 
tion  that  whether  in  the  graphic  or  in  the 
literary  art  no  man  can  do  his  best  work 
\  unless  he  chooses  for  his  subject  a  life  which 
I  he  thoroughly  knows. 

And  Edward  Eggleston  knew  the  ruder 
side  of  the  Hoosier  life  and  character  all 
the  better  for  the  reason  that  in  his  child 
hood  and  youth  he  had  been  u  in  it  but  not 
of  it."  He  had  seen  it  in  perspective.  He 
always  had  something  better  in  his  own  home 
and  associations,  by  which  to  measure  the 
rudeness  that  showed  itself  all  about  him. 

The  peculiarities  of  the  Hoosier  dialect 

.interested  him  chiefly  because  of  their  wide 

departure    from    the    good     English    which 

alone   he   heard    at  home.     When  he  wrote 

"The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  he  was  in  his 

14 


The      Author's      Commission 

early  thirties,  and  had  for  years  been  a 
dweller  in  great  cities.  But  his  memory  of 
the  life,  the  character  and  the  dialect  that 
had  so  intensely  interested  him  in  his  boy 
hood  was  vivid  and  accurate  in  an  extreme 
degree,  and  so  effectively  did  he  present 
them  in  literature  that  "The  Hoosier  School 
master,"  after  being  serially  published  in 
many  periodicals,  outsold  any  novel  of  its 
time  in  book  form,  and  in  new  editions  it 
continues  to  sell  better  to-day  than  most  new 
books  do.  It  attracted  attention  abroad 
also.  It  was  translated  into  French  and 
published  in  a  noted  French  periodical.  It 
was  translated  into  German,  the  translator 
using  what  we  call  "Pennsylvania  Dutch" 
in  lieu  of  the  Hoosier  dialect.  Concerning 
the  French  translation,  the  Rev.  Washington 
Gladden  wrote  in  the  Independent  that  he 
had  not  yet  seen  it,  but  was  eager  for  a 
sight  of  it  for  the  reason  that  he  strongly 
desired  to  know  the  classic  Frencn  form  of 
"  Gee  Whillicky  Crickets!" 
15 


the     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

In  making  effective  literary  use  of  the 
Hoosier  life,  character  and  dialect,  Edward 
Eggleston  was  as  truly  the  pioneer  as  Bret 
Harte  was  in  doing  the  like  for  the  mining 
camps.  It  is  in  every  way  proper,  therefore, 
that  I  call  him  "The  First  of  the  Hoosiers." 


16 


CHAPTER    II. 

A  Little  Love   Story  and   Other    Matters. 

earliest  recollection  of  my  brother 
—or  of  myself  either  for  that  mat- 
ter— is  "that  of  two  little  fellows 
chasing  fireflies  on  a  lawn  on  the 
bank  of  the  Ohio  river,  five  or  six  miles 
below  Vevay,  Indiana.  It  was  a  sultry  eve 
ning,  and  the  entire  family  sat  out  of  doors. 
Our  father  had  stretched  a  thin  silk  hand 
kerchief  ov7er  his  tall  hat  so  that  we  might 
put  our  fireflies  into  the  hat  and  see  them 
"lighten"  under  the  thin  silk. 

That  father  was  a  man  of  far  more  than 
ordinary  gifts,  both  of  intellect  and  of  ac 
quirement.  The  son  of  an  old  Virginia 
planter  family,  and  of  a  father  who  had  been 
a  captain  in  Washington's  army  at  York- 
town,  our  father  had  taken  his  degree  in 
arts  at  William  and  Mary  College — at  that 
17 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

time  a  famous  seat  of  learning.  After  that 
he  had  studied  law  in  the  law  school  of 
Judge  Tucker,  at  Winchester.  Upon  his 
graduation  in  law  he  had  gone  to  the  West 
to  see  what  use  he  might  make  of  his  natural 
and  acquired  gifts  in  a  region  which  was  then 
the  promised  land  to  young  men  of  charac 
ter  and  ability. 

Settling  himself  at  Vevay  he  soon 
achieved  a  foremost  place  for  himself  at 
the  bar  and  in  public  life,  serving  with 
marked  distinction  in  the  Indiana  State 
Senate. 

But  he  did  not  permit  his  devotion  to 
the  law  or  his  public  activities  to  divert  him 
from  intellectual  occupations  of  a  finer  kind. 
He  surrounded  himself  with  books  in  Eng 
lish  and  French,  giving  his  leisure  to  the  read 
ing  of  philosophy,  history  and  belleslettres. 

The  educated  people  of  that  region 
held  him  in  high  esteem,  while  the  unedu 
cated  cherished  the  fixed  conviction  that  he 
"knew  everything."  That,  of  course,  was 

18 


A   Little   Love  Story  and   Other   Matters 

not  true,  but  he  knew  much  of  science,  as 
well  as  of  law,  letters  and  history;  and  it 
was  his  habit  to  explain  things  most  fasci 
natingly  to  his  children  whenever  occasion 
arose.  I  suppose  he  told  us  something 
about  insect  life  on  that  sultry  August  eve 
ning  when  he  let  us  imprison  the  fireflies  in 
his  hat.  If  he  did,  I  was  too  young  to  re 
member  the  instruction.  I  recall  only  the 
fun  of  it  all. 

The  story  of  our  father's  marriage  with 
our  mother  is  interesting  enough  to  be  told 
here,  particularly  as  it  gives  opportunity  to 
explain  what  manner  of  men  and  women 
Edward  Eggleston's  forebears  were  on  the 
mother's  side.  Our  maternal  grandfather, 
George  Craig,  \vas  a  Kentuckian,  of  early 
pioneer  stock — descended  from  men  who 
sturdily  bore  their  part  in  "  the  winning  of 
the  West."  His  wife,  Jane  Lowry,  was  also 
Kentuckian,  of  that  Scotch-Irish  blood  which 
played  so  large  a  part  in  the  Revolution  and 
the  Indian  wars. 

19 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

Together  these  two  crossed  the  river, 
setting  their  negroes  free,  and  buying  great 
areas  of  fertile  land  in  Indiana.  George 
Craig  was  a  man  of  unusual  intelligence  and 
indomitable  energy.  He  had  all  of  educa 
tion  that  could  be  secured  in  the  Kentucky 
of  his  boyhood,  and  he  soon  came  to  be 
the  foremost  man  in  all  southeastern  Indiana. 

He  built  stoutly  of  stone,  while  those 
about  him  were  content  with  log  cabins  to 
live  in.  He  planted  large  orchards  even 
after  he  had  reached  the  age  of  seventy 
years.  He  maintained  a  nursery  of  young 
trees,  and  was  the  first  man  in  all  that  coun 
try  to  produce  improved  varieties  of  apples 
and  other  fruits  by  selection  and  careful  cul 
tivation.  To  this  day  there  are  grown  in 
that  region  apples  that  bear  his  name,  be 
cause  it  was  he  who  originated  the  varieties. 
The  bar  in  the  river  is  still  Craig's  bar;  the 
township  in  which  he  lived  is  Craig  town 
ship,  and  the  country  all  about  still  bears 
witness  to  an  energy  and  intelligence  that 
20 


A   Little   Love  Story  and  Other   Matters 

enabled  that  one  man  to  scrawl  ''George 
Craig,  his  mark,"  all  over  the  land. 

His  influence  was  in  every  way  good 
and  for  good.  He  had  no  patience  with 
clumsy,  shiftless  methods  where  better  could 
be  devised.  He  built  a  great  stone  "  dry 
house,"  which  I  remember  very  well,  though 
it  was  burned  while  I  was  yet  a  boy.  Its 
upper  story  was  for  the  storage  of  all  farm 
produce  that  frost  might  injure,  and  the  en 
trance  to  that  story  was  reached,  not  by  a 
stairway,  but  by  a  gently  inclined  plane  of 
hewn  beams,  up  which  barrels  might  be  easily 
rolled.  Below  were  other  storage  rooms  for 
farm  implements — for  he  would  never  toler 
ate  the  practice,  common  among  farmers 
even  yet,  of  leaving  farm  implements  wher 
ever  they  were  last  used.  He  insisted  that 
everything,  from  a  rake  or  a  plow  to  a  hoe, 
should  be  housed  when  not  in  use. 

But  the  most  interesting  part  of  the 
dry  house  was  its  basement.  It  was  the 
practice  of  the  people  of  that  region,  when 

21 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

they  wished  to  make  soap,  or  render  out 
lard,  or  preserve  fruits,  to  hang  a  kettle  out 
of  doors  and  build  a  fire  under  it.  Our 
grandfather  regarded  this  as  a  shiftless  pro 
ceeding,  and  so,  in  the  basement  of  his  dry 
house  he  built  long  stone  furnaces,  with  big 
and  little  kettles  set  into  them,  and,  with 
broad  areas  left  bare  for  the  purpose  of 
drying  fruits  upon  them.  Here  every  year, 
at  a  minimum  cost  of  labor,  the  lard  from 
some  hundreds  of  hogs  was  rendered,  the 
soap  for  family  use  was  made,  the  preserves 
were  put  up,  the  apples  and  peaches  dried, 
and  everything  else  done  that  required  the 
use  of  a  kettle  or  a  flat  stone  with  fire 
under  it. 

Not  content  with  this,  George  Craig 
sought  convenience  in  handling  the  great 
quantities  of  apples  which  he  grew  for  ship 
ment  by  flatboat  to  New  Orleans.  To  that 
end  he  built  a  very  long  structure,  called  the 
apple  house.  It  could  be  opened  at  both 
ends,  and  a  wagon  road  ran  through  it,  on 

22 


A   Little   Love  Story  and   Other  Matters 

either  side  of  which  were  great  bins,  into 
which  the  apples  were  unloaded  from  the 
wagons  until  the  time  should  come  for  bar 
reling  and  shipping  them. 

Such  a  man  was  an  influence  for  good 
in  the  community,  and  both  by  precept  and 
by  example  he  taught  his  neighbors  much  of 
thrift  and  energy  that  it  was  good  for  them 
to  learn.  He  had  a  family  of  boys  and 
girls  of  his  own,  numerous  enough  to  satisfy 
even  President  Roosevelt's  idea  of  good 
citizenship ;  but  he  added  several  adopted 
ones  to  the  number.  These  were  the  chil 
dren  of  the  poorest  of  his  neighbors,  who 
could  scarcely  put  bread  into  the  mouths 
of  their  numerous  broods.  When  George 
Craig  found  one  of  these  poverty-ham 
pered  children,  who  gave  promise  of  abil 
ity,  he  adopted  the  child  and  gave  him 
the  best  education  that  the  schools  of  that 
time  and  country  afforded.  In  every  case,  I 
believe,  these  adopted  ones  justified  his 
judgment  and  his  generosity  by  becoming 

23 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

successful  men  or  women,  and  one  of  them 
at  least — Sam  Parker — became  the  most  dis 
tinguished  lawyer  of  his  time  in  Indiana 
and  a  State  Senator  of  more  than  ordinary 
influence.  But  for  his  adoption  by  George 
Craig  he  would  probably  never  have  learned 
even  to  read. 

Edward's  mother  and  mine  was  one  of 
George  Craig's  many  daughters,  and  our 
father  met  her  in  her  father's  house  on  the 
bank  of  the  Ohio  five  or  six  miles  below 
Vevay.  He  had  gone  thither  to  draw  up 
some  deeds  or  upon  some  other  such  law 
business,  as  he  had  frequently  done  before. 
He  was  to  stay  over  night,  and  during  the 
evening  the  shrewdly  intelligent  old  pioneer 
drew  the  highly  educated  and  intellectual 
young  lawyer  into  a  conversation  of  more 
than  ordinary  interest. 

In  those  days  tallow  candles  were  the 
only  artificial  lights  in  use,  and  each  family 
manufactured  them  in  tin  moulds.  These 
moulds  consisted  of  a  group  of  candle- 

24 


A   Little   Love   Story  and   Other  Matters 

shaped  tubes  fastened  together  into  a  tin 
plate  at  top.  In  our  grandfather's  house 
one  of  these  tubes  had  become  detached 
from  the  frame. 

Our  mother,  then  a  girl  of  eighteen  or 
nineteen,  wished  to  light  a  candle  for  some 
purpose,  but,  by  mistake,  got  the  loose 
candle-mould  instead.  She  was  a  girl  of 
eager  mind,  and  when  she  went  to  light  her 
candle,  she  became  deeply  interested  in 
something  that  the  young  lawyer  was  saying, 
and  for  a  time  she  stood  holding  the  point 
of  the  tin  tube  in  the  flame  of  a  candle  on 
the  table  at  her  father's  elbow.  Presently 
the  young  lawyer  observed  her  and  told  her 
of  her  mistake,  to  her  great  confusion.  But 
he  observed  also  how  deeply  interested  the 
girl  had  become  in  what  he  was  saying,  and 
was  surprised  that  she  should  know  or  care 
anything  about  the  subject  of  his  talk.  So 
for  the  first  time  he  entered  into  conversa 
tion  with  her,  and  found  to  his  astonishment 
that  this  western  country  girl  was  a  young 
25 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

woman  of  intellect,  who  had  read  a  good 
deal  with  rare  discretion,  and  who  was  capa 
ble  of  thinking  soundly  for  herself.  From 
that  time  forward  he  sought  to  draw  her 
into  conversation  at  every  opportunity.  His 
admiration  grew  into  a  warmer  sentiment, 
and  after  a  time  she  became  his  wife  and  a 
sharer  in  all  his  intellectual  pursuits.  She 
read  his  law  books  with  the  rest,  and  he 
used  to  declare  that  he  depended  more  upon 
her  counsel  in  dealing  with  perplexing  law 
points  than  upon  that  of  any  lawyer  at  the 
bar. 

My  own  reverent  recollection  of  her 
presents  her  to  my  mind  as  one  of  the  wisest 
as  well  as  one  of  the  gentlest  of  women. 

The  young  couple  took  up  their  resi 
dence  in  VeVay,  in  a  brick  house  which  our 
father  bought  while  it  was  in  course  of  con 
struction  and  himself  finished.  He  built  a 
brick  office  for  himself  in  the  grounds,  a 
little  way  from  the  house.  Years  after  his 
death  that  office  served  Edward  and  me  for 

26 


THE  BIRTH   PLACE  OF  EDWARD  EGGLESTON,   IN  VEVAY,   INDIANA 


A   Little   Love   Story  and   Other  Matters 

bedroom  and  general  quarters.  There  was 
held  the  debating  society  which  Edward 
organized.  There  we  had  our  books,  in 
cluding  a  valuable  collection  of  standard 
works  purchased  by  our  widowed  mother 
with  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  our  father's 
law  library,  in  accordance  with  his  dying  in 
structions. 

The  Vevay  house,  in  which  Edward  was 
born  on  the  10th  of  December,  1837,  stood 
in  a  square  of  ground  about  an  acre  in  ex 
tent — or  perhaps  a  little  more.  This  our 
father  had  planted  in  fruit  trees,  grape  vines 
and  the  like,  making  of  it  an  ideal  home  in 
which  to  bring  up  boys.  It  has  since  been 
divided,  and  built  over  with  other  houses. 

But  at  the  time  of  the  firefly  frolic  we 
were  living  on  the  farm  which  our  mother 
had  inherited  from  her  father.  This  change 
had  been  made  for  the  sake  of  our  father's 
health,  which  had  never  been  strong,  and 
was  now  growing  feeble. 


27 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster's    First   School. 

ROM  the  earliest  days  of  its  settle 
ment  until  now,  Indiana  has  taken 
the  lead  among  Western  States  in 
all  matters  that  concern  education.. 
But  the  beginnings  of  education  there,  as 
in  all  newly  peopled  regions,  were  crude  in 
method  and  meagre  in  scope.  There  were 
some  fairly  good  schools  in  the  little  towns, 
presided  over  by  the  "  Yankee  school 
marms,"  whose  missionary  spirit  early  car 
ried  them  across  the  mountains  by  toilsome 
methods  of  travel,  and  brought  into  the 
early  West  a  culture  that  might  otherwise 
have  been  much  longer  delayed  in  its  com 
ing.  But  in  the  country  districts  the  schools 
were  exceedingly  rudimentary  in  character. 
Their  teachers  were  for  the  most  part  scant 
ily  furnished  with  learning  on  their  own 

28 


The   Hoosier  Schoolmaster's  First   School 

account,  and  they  knew  nothing  whatever  of 
the  art  or  the  science  of  teaching.  Peda 
gogy — if  the  word  had  been  brought  to 
their  attention — would  have  meant  to  them 
nothing  more  than  a  new  word  to  be  "  given 
out"  at  spelling  matches  for  the  confusion 
of  the  champion  spellers  of  the  neighbor 
hood. 

Any  man  who  could  "  read,  write,  and 
cipher  to  the  rule  of  three"  was  thought  to 
be  equipped  for  the  mastery  of  a  school,  if 
he  had  also  a  strong  arm  and  a  determined 
will  with  which  to  maintain  his  mastery  and 
keep  his  pupils  in  subjection. 

But  one  fact  was  significant,  and  it  was 
prophetic  of  that  advancement  in  culture 
which  Indiana  has  since  achieved.  Poor  as 
the  schools  were,  absolutely  all  the  boys  and 
girls  in  the  district  attended  them.  This 
was  true  even  before  the  schools  became 
free,  and  while  yet  each  pupil's  tuition 
must  be  paid  for  at  rates  varying,  accord 
ing  to  age,  from  fifty  cents  to  two  dollars  a 
29 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

quarter.  If  there  was  not  much  of  educa 
tion  to  be  secured  in  the  country  districts  in 
those  early  days,  at  any  rate  everybody  there 
was  determined  to  get  all  of  it  that  could  be 
had. 

It  was  under  these  conditions  that  Ed 
ward  Eggleston  entered  his  first  school,  at 
the  age  of  six  years.  By  dint  of  much  en 
treaty  I  secured  a  decision,  at  the  hands  of 
the  family  conclave,  permitting  me  also  to 
attend  the  school,  under  the  protection  of 
our  mother's  "  bound  girl,"  who  was,  of 
course,  to  be  a  pupil. 

In  those  days  almost  every  family  in 
tolerably  comfortable  circumstances  had  one 
u  bound  girl  "  or  more.  These  were  usually 
orphans  who  had  been  left  destitute  on  the 
death  of  their  parents.  Instead  of  sending 
them  to  be  reared  in  orphan  asylums,  of 
which  there  were  none  in  that  self-reliant 
land  of  promise,  or  sending  them  to  the 
poorhouse,  which  was  apt  to  be  an  exceed 
ingly  poor  house  indeed,  the  public  authori- 
30 


The   Hoosier   Schoolmaster's   First  School 

ties  usually  indentured  such  orphans  to  serve 
during  their  nonage  in  families  able  and 
willing  to  care  for  them.  They  became 
members  of  the  families  in  every  such  case, 
and  were  never  conscious  of  a  condition  of 
subjection  in  that  simple,  democratic  state 
of  existence  where  it  was  the  custom  of  all 
to  work,  and  where  each  did  the  duty  that 
lay  next  to  him  or  her,  without  a  thought 
that  there  could  be  aught  of  humiliation  in 
doing  it,  or  any  shame,  except  in  neglect  to 
do  it  honestly  and  well. 

The  bound  girl  or  bound  boy  always 
went  to  school  with  the  other  children  of 
the  family,  whenever  "school  kept,"  as  the 
phrase  went — that  is  to  say,  whenever  there 
was  a  school  open  in  the  neighborhood, 
which  was  usually  during  three  months,  or, 
under  favorable  circumstances,  during  five 
or  six  months  of  each  year.  The  indentures 
indeed  required  those  to  whom  girls  and 
boys  were  bound,  to  give  them  at  least  three 
months  of  schooling  in  each  year;  but  the 
31 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

requirement  was  wholly  unnecessary  as  a 
legal  prescription  in  a  generously-minded 
community,  where  public  sentiment  and  a 
common  moral  sense  impelled  all  parents, 
guardians  and  masters  to  give  to  every  child 
the  most  and  the  best  of  education  that 
could  be  secured. 

The  school  which  Edward  and  I  first 
attended  was  in  some  respects  interesting. 
It  was  held  in  a  log  cabin  a  mile  or  so  from 
our  house.  The  master  was  a  very  estimable 
man  named  Benefiel,  who  had  taught  our 
mother  before  us.  He  enjoyed  an  enviable 
reputation  for  scholarship,  which  I  have  no 
doubt  was  thoroughly  well  deserved.  For 
one  thing  the  "rule  of  three"  had  set  no 
bounds  to  his  mathematical  acquirements. 
It  was  wonderingly  said  of  him  that  u  he 
knew  the  whole  arithmetic,"  and  it  was 
darkly  whispered  that  in  addition  to  that  he 
possessed  certain  occult  knowledge  which  in 
our  time  would  be  described  as  an  acquaint 
ance  with  elementary  Algebra  and  the  rudi- 

32 


The   Hoosier   Schoolmaster's   First  School 

ments  of  Geometry.  I  think  I  do  not  wrong 
the  good  man's  memory  or  betray  any  confi 
dence  in  saying  that  I  met  him  many  years 
afterward,  when  he  was  an  old  man  and  I  a 
college  student,  and  that  he  then  confessed 
to  me  that  even  at  the  time  of  my  earliest 
school  days  he  had  been  able  to  find  out  the 
value  of  x  in  a  simple  equation. 

But  when  Edward  Eggleston  was  six 
years  old  and  I  four,  Mr.  Benefiel  "kept 
school"  upon  the  primitive  plan  that  was 
then  everywhere  accepted. 

There  was  only  one  point  of  radical 
difference  between  different  schools  in  those 
days;  some  of  them  were  "loud  schools" 
and  some  were  "still  schools."  Mr.  Bene- 
fiel's  was  a  "loud"  school.  That  is  to  say, 
he  required  all  his  pupils  to  study  their  les 
sons  "  out  loud,"  in  order  that  he  might  be 
sure  they  were  all  studying. 

Some  of  the  pupils,  as  I  now  realize, 
though  I  did  not  recognize  the  fact  at  the 
time,  were  possessed  of  nervous  systems. 
33 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

These  unfortunate  ones  were  naturally  and 
sorely  disturbed  in  their  minds  by  the  babel 
of  ceaselessly  wagging  tongues.  In  order  to 
drown  the  distracting  sound  of  others'  voices, 
these  nervous  ones  were  accustomed  to  raise 
their  own  voices  higher  and  higher,  and  to 
shout  louder  and  louder  as  the  period  of 
study  went  on. 

For  my  own  part,  being  a  little  lad  of 
exceedingly  robust  physique,  I  mightily 
enjoyed  this  tumult.  But  poor  Edward,  a 
nervous  and  sensitive  child,  was  tortured  by 
it  into  a  condition  of  mental  helplessness  in 
which  he  found  it  impossible  to  determine  in 
his  own  mind  whether  the  letters  "  b-a-k-e-r  " 
in  his  spelling  book  spelled  "lady"  or 
"  shady."  He  would  go  over  and  over  the 
words  with  that  conscientiousness  which 
lashed  and  tortured  him  well-nigh  to  the  end 
of  his  days,  but  all  to  no  purpose.  He 
simply  could  not  force  attention  upon  his 
mind  in  the  midst  of  such  a  din. 

I  got  off  much  more  easily,  as  I  remenv 

34  1 


The  Hoosier   Schoolmaster's   First  School 

her  with  a  chuckle  of  delight  even  now,  by 
means  of  a  device  of  my  own.  I  made  it  a 
practice  merely  to  shout  the  vowel  in  the 
accented  syllable  of  each  word,  leaving  the 
rest  of  it  to  whatever  fate  chance  might 
decree  for  it. 

Not  many  moons  before  he  left  us  for 
the  long  journey  that  each  of  us  must  make 
alone,  I  talked  with  Edward  about  all  this. 
In  the  course  of  our  conversation  I  said  to 
him : 

u  What  a  troublesome  conscience  you 
had  in  your  boyhood  !  " 

"  Yes,"  he  answered,  with  a  laugh. 
"And  its  most  troublesome  peculiarity  was 
its  vicariousness.  I  have  spent  many  sleep 
less  nights,  Geordie,  in  repenting  of  your  sins. 
Since  I  grew  old  enough  and  wise  enough  to 
leave  them  to  your  care  I  have  slept  better." 

But  in  those  long  gone  days,  when  he 

and  I  were  little  fellows,  in  our  first  school, 

Edward  detected  my  trick  of  deceiving  the 

master,  and    it   mightily   disturbed  his  con- 

35 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

science.  He  trudged  homeward  that  day  in  a 
solemn  silence,  which  no  word  of  mine  could 
induce  him  to  break,  though  I  tried  hard  to 
divert  his  mind,  in  the  conviction  that  his 
silence  was  in  some  way  prompted  by  his 
knowledge  of  some  misconduct  of  mine.  I 
was  conscious  of  many  things  in  my  conduct 
which  would  not  bear  close  scrutiny.  When 
we  reached  home  Edward  was  confronted 
with  a  new  conscientious  scruple,  worse  even 
than  the  first.  He  knew  of  no  way  by  which  he 
could  hope  to  save  me  from  the  consequences 
of  my  sin  of  deception,  except  by  report 
ing  the  facts  to  our  mother.  But  our  father, 
a  Virginian  of  sternest  virtue  in  all  that 
touched  upon  honor  in  conduct,  had  taught 
him  from  infancy  to  regard  all  tale  bearing 
as  unutterably  mean  and  unworthy  of  "  a 
gentleman's  son  " —for  that  appeal  to  the 
law  of  noblesse  oblige  was  always  our  father's 
final  resort  of  instruction. 

Thus  Edward  dared  not  relieve  his  con 
science    by    making  a  charge    of  deception 
36 


The   Hoosier  Schoolmaster's    First  School 

against  me  before  the  domestic  tribunal  pre 
sided  over  by  our  mother.  I  think  he  must 
have  passed  as  nearly  a  sleepless  night  over 
this  matter  of  divided  duty  as  it  is  possible 
for  a  six  year  old  boy  to  spend  over  any 
trouble. 

When  morning  came  he  had  decided 
upon  his  course  of  conduct.  He  asked 
Jane,  the  bound  girl,  to  walk  well  in  front  of 
us  on  the  way  to  school.  Then  he  took  my 
little  hand  lovingly  into  his  own  scarcely 
larger  one  and  expounded  his  thought  to 
me.  In  his  preternaturally  old  and  wise 
way,  he  set  forth  the  fact  that,  in  doing  as 
I  had  done,  I  had  been  deceiving  the  teacher. 

I  promptly  admitted  that.  I  even  con 
fessed  that  it  had  been  my  deliberate  pur 
pose  to  deceive  him,  and  that  I  intended  to 
go  on  doing  so.  I  do  not  suppose  that  my 
four-year-old  intelligence  formulated  the 
thought  in  those  words,  but  I  very  well  re 
member  that  my  little  baby  soul  was  in  revolt 
against  what  I  vaguely  perceived  to  be  the 

37 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

injustice  of  requiring  a  poor  little  fellow 
like  me  to  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with 
older  boys  and  girls,  some  of  them  twenty 
years  old  or  more,  and  do  like  tasks  with 
them.  I  managed  somehow  to  convey  this 
thought  to  Edward's  mind,  and  I  resolutely 
went  on  with  my  device  for  equalizing  mat 
ters  by  cheating  the  master  out  of  that 
which  I  did  not  regard  as  his  due. 

I  cannot  remember  now  how  Edward 
settled  this  affair  with  his  vicarious  con 
science.  Neither  could  he  remember,  when 
we  laughingly  talked  of  the  incident  at  Lake 
George  one  day,  a  year  or  two  before  his 
death. 

Let  us  return  to  the  school.  Discipline 
in  those  days  always  took  the  form  of  physi 
cal  chastisement.  On  his  way  to  school 
every  morning  the  master  cut  and  trimmed 
eight  or  ten  stout  beechen  "  switches,"  as 
they  were  called — ox  goads  would  have  been 
a  fitter  name.  They  were  about  five  feet 
long  and  of  a  goodly  diameter.  These  he 
38 


The   Hoosier  Schoolmaster's  First   School 

placed  on  two  pegs  in  the  wall  just  over  his 
desk — all  of  them  but  one.  That  one  he 
kept  always  on  his  desk  or  in  his  strong 
right  hand  for  instant  use  when  needed. 
Thus  armed  for  the  day's  work  the  master 
felt  himself  equipped  to  compel  good  beha 
vior  and  a  due  advancement  in  learning  on 
the  part  of  his  "scholars" — for  the  words 
"teacher"  and  "pupil"  were  not  in  school 
use  at  that  time.  It  was  always  "  the  master  " 
and  "the  scholars." 

The  belligerent  method  of  instruction 
extended  to  every  matter  that  required  cor 
rection  or  any  encouragement  to  endeavor. 
If  a  boy  misspelled  a  word,  he  instantly 
received  a  sharp  cut  from  the  master's 
switch.  If  he  failed  to  get  the  right  answer 
to  his  "sum"  he  was  encouraged  to  try 
harder  by  two  or  three  stinging  blows.  If 
he  whispered  to  a  neighbor  without  first 
saying  to  the  master,  "Please  may  I  speak 
to  Johnny,"  the  fault  was  treated  with  some 
severity  as  a  grave  moral  delinquency,  and 

39 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

punished  by  at  least  half  a  dozen  lashes. 
If  one  of  the  little  boys,  who  was  too  young 
to  "  take  writin',''  crawled  upon  the  bench 
which  fronted  the  long  writing  desk,  and 
thus  turned  his  back  upon  the  master,  an 
attack  from  the  rear  was  sure  to  come 
quickly. 

In  the  case  of  more  serious  offences, 
involving  real  moral  delinquency,  the  offender 
was  summoned  to  the  open  space  in  front  of 
the  master's  desk,  where  he  was  required  to 
remove  his  coat,  if  he  had  one,  and  there  he 
was  severely  flogged.  Not  in  Mr.  BenefieFs 
school,  but  in  another  which  Edward  and 
I  attended  some  years  later  in  the  little 
city  of  Madison,  I  several  times  saw  shirts 
deeply  stained  with  blood  when  these  casti- 
gations  were  over. 

There  were  here  and  there  schoolmas 
ters  disposed  to  experiment  in  what  I  may 
properly  call  pedagogic  penology.  These 
sought  to  give  the  element  of  variety  to 
school  discipline,  and  to  reduce  the  use  of 

40 


The   Hoosier   Schoolmaster's   First  School 

the  rod  somewhat,  by  the  substitution  of 
such  devices  as  fools'  caps,  dunces'  stools  and 
the  like.  One  of  them  sometimes  punished 
a  boy  by  making  him  stand  on  one  leg  till 
he  could  stand  no  more,  and  then  flogging 
him  for  putting  the  other  foot  down.  But 
such  experiments  were  usually  unsuccessful, 
at  least  in  the  country  districts.  The  boys, 
accustomed  as  they  were  to  a  severer  method, 
were  apt  to  conclude  that  a  master  thus 
gently  minded  was  "  afeard  "  to  whip  them, 
and  in  most  such  cases  they  went  into  inso 
lent  revolt  in  an  endeavor  to  see  how  far 
they  might  defy  an  authority  which  they 
deemed  weakly  irresolute.  The  struggle 
between  the  master  and  the  scholars  was 
continuous,  and  it  was  accounted  by  the 
boys  rather  as  an  enjoyable  than  a  regret- 
able  part  of  their  school-boy  life. 

If  the  master  assumed  to  u  keep  school" 
on  a  holiday,  the  scholars  all  attended.  But 
they  went  to  school  earlier  than  usual,  took 
possession  there,  and  "locked  the  master 

41 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

out,"  barricading   doors   and  windows   and 
standing  upon  their  defence.     Then  ensued 
a   struggle,  the   master   trying  to   force  his 
way  into  the  school-house  and   the  scholars 
trying  to  keep   him  out.     If  he  got  in,  he 
flogged  everybody  concerned.    If  the  scholars 
were  successful  in  their  defence  the  master 
secured    peace   upon   terms   that  were   quite 
well  understood  in  advance.     He  agreed  to 
"treat"  the  school  to  a  bushel  of  apples  and 
to  punish  nobody  for  having  participated  in 
the  rebellion.     Just  why  a  bushel  of  apples 
should  have  been  so  placative  in  a  country  in 
which    everybody  had    unlimited    apples   at 
home,  it  is  difficult  to  conjecture.     Perhaps 
it  was   because  apples  were  about  the  only 
thing  available  for  the  purpose,  and  because 
their  enforced  contribution  marked  and  sig 
nalized  victory  on  the  part  of  the  scholars. 
It   was    an    unequal    contest    in    every   way. 
The  scholars  had  the  advantages  of  posses 
sion,    fortification    and     superior    numbers. 
But  these  odds  were  in  a  measure  offset  by 

42 


The    Hoosier  Schoolmaster's   First   School 

the  inequality  of  the  stakes,  as  it  were.  The 
scholars  risked  a  very  painful  punishment 
upon  the  chance  of  getting  only  some  apples. 

Sometimes  the  master  succeeded  in  car 
rying  the  fort.  Readers  of  "The  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster "  will  remember  that  Ralph 
Hartsook  did  so.  But  usually  the  master 
was  forced  to  yield  the  victory  to  the  insur 
gent  scholars. 

The  master's  authority  was  by  tradition 
held  to  extend  for  half  a  mile  from  the 
school-house  in  every  direction.  Any  offence 
committed  within  that  distance,  on  the  way 
to  or  from  school,  was  within  the  jurisdic 
tion.  When  two  boys  had  arranged  to  fight, 
or  when  one  boy  had  made  up  his  mind  to 
thrash  another,  the  two  would  walk  by  the 
same  road — though  their  homes  might  lie  in 
opposite  directions — until  the  half  mile  line 
was  passed.  Then  the  set-to  would  occur, 
without  the  fear  of  the  schoolmaster  before 
the  eyes  of  the  combatants. 

Both  Edward  and  I  could  read  before 

43 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

we  entered  our  first  school.  Neither  of  us, 
indeed,  could  ever  remember  a  time  when  we 
could  not  read  or  ride  a  horse,  and  neither 
ever  knew  when  or  how  he  learned  either  art. 
In  our  father's  house  the  children  "  staggered 
against  books"  in  their  infancy,  as  Dr. 
Holmes  puts  the  matter.  But  at  school  no 
account  whatever  was  taken  of  our  ability 
to  read,  nor  were  we  permitted  to  practice 
that  art.  It  was  the  fixed  rule  of  the  master 
that  each  scholar  should  "  go  through  the 
spelling-book  three  timesTTXvi^e  on  the  book 
and  once  off  the  book,"  before  beginning 
to  read.  "On  the  book "  meant  spelling 
and  pronouncing  the  words,  with  the  book 
before  the  eyes.  u  Off  the  book "  meant 
spelling  from  memory  as  the  words  were 
given  out. 

In  addition  to  the  regular  spelling  les 
sons  of  the  day,  the  whole  school  was  re 
quired,  as  a  final  exercise  each  afternoon, 
to  stand  in  one  long  row,  called  "the  big 
spelling  class,"  for  competitive  examination 

44 


The   Hoosier  Schoolmaster's  First   School 

in  the  art.  If  a  word  was  misspelled  by  one, 
it  was  passed  to  the  next  below,  and  so  on 
till  some  one  succeeded  in  spelling  it  cor 
rectly.  The  successful  speller  was  said  to 
have  "  turned  down  "  all  who  had  failed,  and 
was  entitled  to  take  his  place  above  them  in 
the  line.  At  the  close  of  the  exercise  the 
scholar  who  stood  at  the  head  of  the  class 
was  assigned  to  the  foot  of  it  for  the  next 
day,  and  a  record  was  kept  of  the  number 
of  times  that  each  had  "  gone  foot."  Some 
small  distinction  was  supposed  to  have  been 
achieved  by  the  scholar  whose  record  at  the 
end  of  the  term  showed  the  greatest  number 
of  goings  to  the  foot.  This  was  about  the 
only  use  made  of  the  principle  of  rewards 
in  the  country  schools  of  that  time.  No 
other  word  of  praise  was  ever  spoken  by 
the  teacher.  Indeed,  he  would  have  put 
himself  in  serious  danger  of  losing  his  place 
had  he  indulged  any  impulse  he  might  have 
had  to  commend  a  pupil.  It  was  at  that 
time  held  that  commendation  was  sure  to 
45 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

spoil  a  child  and  breed  vanity  and  conceit  in 
his  mind. 

The  prominence  given  to  spelling  over 
all  other  educational  agencies  at  that  time 
was  still  further  emphasized  by  frequent 
"spelling  matches."  My  brother  has  so 
fully  described  these  that  I  shall  not  here  at 
tempt  to  add  anything  to  what  he  wrote 
concerning  them.  His  account  of  these  con 
tests  led  to  their  revival  all  over  the  country 
as  a  novel  and  amusing  form  of  social  enter- 
tainmeut. 

One  incident,  however,  I  must  relate. 
In  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  one  Jeems 
or  Jim  Phillips  is  mentioned  as  the  champion 
speller.  The  text  says  of  him: 

"Jim  Phillips  was  a  tall,  lank,  stoop- 
shouldered  fellow,  who  had  never  distin 
guished  himself  in  any  other  pursuit  than 
spelling.  Except  in  this  one  art  of  spelling 
he  was  of  no  account.  He  could  not  catch 
well  or  bat  well  in  ball.  He  could  not  throw 
well  enough  to  make  his  mark  in  that  famous 

46 


The   Hoosier  Schoolmaster's  First   School 

western  game  of  Bull-Pen.  He  did  not  suc 
ceed  well  in  any  study  but  that  of  Webster's 
Elementary.  But  in  that  he  was — to  use 
the  usual  Flat  Creek  locution — in  that  he 
was  '  a  hoss.'  This  genius  for  spelling  is  in 
some  people  a  sixth  sense,  a  matter  of  intui 
tion.  Some  spellers  are  born  and  not  made, 
and  their  facility  reminds  one  of  the  math 
ematical  prodigies  that  crop  out  every  now 
and  then  to  bewilder  the  world.  Bud 
Means,  foreseeing  that  Ralph  would  be 
pitted  against  Jim  Phillips,  had  warned  his 
friend  that  Jim  could  '  spell  like  thunder  and 
lightning,'  and  that  it  'took  a  powerful 
smart  speller'  to  beat  him,  for  he  knew  'a 
heap  of  spelling  book.'  To  have  '  spelled 
down  the  master '  is  next  thing  to  having 
whipped  the  biggest  bully  in  Hoopole 
county,  and  Jim  had  '  spelled  down '  the  last 
three  masters.  He  divided  the  hero-worship 
of  the  district  with  Bud  Means." 

While  "  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster  "  was 
running  as  a  serial  story  in  Hearth  and  Home, 

47 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

the  local  newspaper  in  Edward's  native  town 
of  Vevay,  secured  permission  to  publish  it 
in  instalments.  It  so  happened  that  in 
naming  his  champion  speller  Jeems  Phillips, 
Edward  had  drawn  upon  unconscious  mem 
ory.  For  the  actual  champion  speller  of  our 
boyhood's  days  bore  precisely  that  name 
and  in  other  ways  answered  closely  to  the 
description  given  of  him  in  the  book.  When 
the  chapters  concerning  him  appeared  in 
the  Vevay  Reveille,  Jeems  Phillips's  friends 
began  teasing  him  on  the  subject.  He  soon 
worked  himself  into  a  rage,  and  mounting 
his  horse,  rode  into  Vevay,  with  the  avowed 
purpose  of  "  lickin'  that  thar'  editor  feller," 
for  he  fully  believed  that  the  author  of 
"The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  was  engaged 
in  editing  the  local  newspaper.  The  actual 
editor  succeeded  at  last  in  convincing  him 
that  the  author  of  the  story  lived  in  far-off 
New  York.  Going  further,  he  explained  to 
Jeems  that  so  far  from  having  put  an  affront 
upon  him,  Edward  had  been  greatly  cele- 

48 


The   Hoosier  Schoolmaster's   First  School 

brating  his  attainments  as  a  speller,  and  that 
he  ought  to  feel  pride  rather  than  anger  on 
such  an  occasion.  This  view  of  the  matter 
commended  itself  to  the  vanity  of  Jeems 
Phillips.  From  that  day  forth  he  gloried  in 
the  new  celebrity  conferred  upon  him.  He 
was  the  only  man  in  that  region  who  had 
been  "put  into  a  book,"  the  only  one  who 
had  sufficiently  distinguished  himself  to  de 
serve  literary  celebration.  Thenceforth  no 
gibe  on  that  subject  could  ruffle  him.  Every 
mention  of  it  ministered  to  his  self-satisfac 
tion. 

In  the  spring  of  1900,  Edward  and  I 
revisited  our  native  town  together,  and  while 
there  we  heard  the  sequel  to  the  story. 
When  well  advanced  in  years  Jeems  Phillips 
had  married,  and  at  the  wedding  he  wore  a 
gorgeous  red  and  yellow  flowered  waistcoat. 
He  gave  it  out  that  this  highly  impressive 
garment  had  been  sent  to  him  as  a  wedding 
present  by  the  author  of  "The  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster."  When  he  had  pretty  well 

49 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

worn  it  out,  he  cut  the  cloth  into  bits  and 
sold  them  as  souvenirs  to  his  admiring 
friends,  who  firmly  believed  the  story  of  that 
waistcoat's  origin. 

During  his  later  life,  after  his  twenty 
years  of  minute  investigation  and  scholarly 
study  of  the  forces  that  had  moulded  life  con 
ditions  in  America,  Edward  thought  he"  saw 
the  reason  for  the  excessive  attention  given 
to  spelling  in  the  early  forties.  It  was,  he 
thought,  an  instinctive  effort  to  repair  a  pre 
vious  neglect.  He  pointed  out  the  fact, 
made  obvious  by  the  old  writings  he  had 
studied  so  closely,  that  the  original  settlers 
in  America  and  their  immediate  children 
spelled  much  better  than  did  the  men  and 
women  of  the  second  generation.  This  fact 
he  attributed  to  the  compulsory  neglect  of 
education  by  a  generation  engaged  in  sub 
duing  the  wilderness.  In  the  same  way,  dur 
ing  the  strenuous  time  of  the  "winning  of 
the  West,"  there  had  been  little  opportu 
nity  for  education,  and,  when  a  little  later 
50 


The  Hoosier   Schoolmaster's   First  School 

the  people  of  the  West  began  to  realize 
their  deficiency,  they  set  to  work  to  repair 
it  in  the  persons  of  their  children.  As  that 
deficiency  showed  itself  more  glaringly  in 
the  matter  of  spelling  than  in  any  other,  it 
was  altogether  natural  that  the  new  genera 
tion  should  give  great  and  even  excessive 
attention  to  the  acquirement  of  that  one  art. 
If  the  reader  is  curious  to  know  how 
excessively  bad  the  spelling  of  an  otherwise 
well  educated  and  accomplished  person  can 
be,  he  is  advised  to  read  Mrs.  Ravenel's  very 
charming  and  interesting  collection  of  the 
letters  of  Eliza  Pinckney — born  Eliza  Lucas. 
No  better  educated  or  more  variedly  accom 
plished  gentlewoman  than  Mrs.  Pinckney 
lived  in  all  the  land  in  the  Colonial  times. 
Yet  she  spelled  "hot"  with  two  ut"s,  al 
ways  wrote  "  sopose "  for  suppose,  and 
spelled  generally  in  the  erratic  fashion  that 
these  two  examples  would  suggest. 


51 


CHAPTER    IV. 

Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 


H 


OW  long  our  attendance  upon  Mr. 
Benefiel's  school  continued  I  am 
unable  to  say  with  certainty,  but  I 
think  it  lasted  throughout  the  win 
ter  and  spring  months.  During  the  next 
three  years  we  were  only  twice  placed  in 
school,  and  then  only  for  brief  periods.  The 
schools  we  then  attended  were  what  the  Eng 
lish  call  u  Dames'  schools."  Each  of  them 
was  taught  by  a  lady,  and  the  pupils  were  all 
little  children.  I  remember  that  one  of  these 
ladies  was  a  worthy  German  woman  who 
could  speak  but  little  English,  and  that  so 
brokenly  that  we  found  it  difficult  to  under 
stand  her.  Whether  or  not  Edward  learned 
anything  in  those  two  schools  I  do  not 
know.  I  am  very  sure  I  did  not.  But  the 
companionship  of  children  of  our  own  age, 

52 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

without  the  terror  of  the  flogging  system 
overshadowing  it,  was  good  for  both  of  us. 

For  the  rest,  our  mother  taught  us  lov 
ingly  and  well  at  home,  though  she  had  two 
younger  children  and  our  father,  whose 
health  was  rapidly  declining,  to  care  for. 
She  was  always  a  duty  loving  woman,  and  a 
brave  one,  who  faced  adverse  conditions  with 
courage  and  cheerfulness. 

We  two  boys  lived  much  out  of  doors 
during  that  period  of  three  years,  and  we 
were  very  happy.  Indoors  we  helped  when 
any  entertainment  was  in  preparation,  by 
attending  to  pigs  or  fowls  that  were  roasting 
in  front  of  the  great  cavernous  kitchen  fire 
place — for  at  that  time  no  such  thing  as  a 
cooking  stove  was  known.  The  fowls  and 
pigs  to  be  roasted  were  hung  by  strings 
from  the  ceiling,  and  it  was  our  duty  to  keep 
the  strings  twisted  so  that  the  roasts  should 
continually  revolve.  We  were  expected  also 
to  baste  the  meats  with  their  own  juices, 
from  the  dripping  pans  below. 

53 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

For  outdoor  employments  we  had  only 
to  convoy  the  cows  to  and  from  the  pasture 
twice  a  day,  and  in  the  autumn  to  throw 
corn  to  the  hogs  in  the  pen.  Of  these  ani 
mals  there  were  a  hundred  or  so  on  the 
farm.  During  the  summer  they  ran  wild  in 
the  woods  on  a  high  hill,  growing  lean  and 
healthy  under  conditions  that  were  natural 
to  them.  In  the  autumn  they  were  driven  in 
and  confined  in  a  great  pen,  enclosed  by  a 
rail  fence.  Here  they  were  fed  upon  un 
limited  corn,  in  order  to  fatten  them  quickly. 
Edward  and  I  mightily  rejoiced  in  throwing 
corn  to  them  and  listening  to  their  crunch 
ing  of  the  grains  as  they  ate.  So  great  was 
our  enjoyment  of  this  sport  that  we  often 
sacrificed  our  own  breakfasts  rather  than 
leave  the  neighborhood  of  the  pig-pen. 

"Hog  killing  time"  meant  even  more 
than  Christmas  did  to  us.  It  came  in  De 
cember,  when  the  weather  was  sharply  cold. 
The  slaughtering  was  usually  done  on  the 
river  beach,  where  a  great  bonfire  was  made 
54 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

and  filled  with  stones,  while  casks  were  sunk 
into  the  sand  and  filled  with  water.  When 
the  stones  were  at  white  heat  they  were  cast 
into  the  water-casks  until  the  water  boiled. 
Then  the  hogs,  as  soon  as  they  had  been 
thoroughly  bled,  were  thrust  into  the  boiling 
water  and,  upon  being  withdrawn,  were 
scraped  clean  of  hair,  and  afterwards  dressed 
for  curing. 

As  the  bonfire  was  lighted  about  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  while  it  was  still 
dark,  and  as  we  boys  were  always  permitted 
to  get  up  in  time  to  see  it  lighted,  the  occa 
sion  took  upon  itself  in  our  eyes  the  charac 
ter  of  a  mad  revel.  Then,  too,  the  farm 
hands  who  did  the  killing  and  dressing 
always  gave  us  the  tails  of  the  hogs,  and  we 
roasted  them  in  the  coals  of  the  bonfire. 
We  devoured  them  without  bread,  and  gen 
erally  our  impatience  was  such  that  we  ate 
them  half  raw.  But  the  trichina  spiralis  had 
never  been  heard  of  in  that  early  time,  and 
our  half  savage  outdoor  life  had  given  us 
55 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

digestions  fit  to  wrestle  with  worse  enemies 
to  health  than  underdone  pig  tails. 

When  Edward  was  nine  years  of  age 
our  father  died.  He  approached  the  end 
slowly,  knowing  how  inevitable  it  was.  But 
with  the  calm  mind  of  a  brave  man,  he  recog 
nized  the  truth  and  set  his  house  in  order 
for  the  coming  event.  He  was  especially 
concerned  for  the  health  of  his  children. 
He  had  himself  been  frail  from  boyhood, 
and  he  was  now  about  to  die,  while  yet  a 
young  man  in  his  thirties.  He  firmly  be 
lieved  that  his  impaired  constitution  and  his 
early  death  were  the  consequences  of  exces 
sive  study  and  neglect  of  the  outdoor  life. 
To  guard  his  children  against  a  fate  like  his 
own,  he  carefully  instructed  our  mother  with 
reference  to  our  bringing  up.  He  enjoined 
her  to  guard  us  against  overstudy  and  seden 
tary  habits,  and  asked  her  particularly  to  see 
to  it  that,  during  boyhood's  years,  we  should 
be  sent  to  the  country  every  summer  to 
work  on  a  farm  for  our  board.  So  much  of 
56 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

compensation  he  desired  us  to  receive  in 
order  that  our  sense  of  justice  might  not  be 
offended.  But  he  desired  that  we  should  at 
no  time  be  permitted  to  receive  money 
wages,  lest  we  acquire  in  youth  that  money 
loving  spirit  which  he  feared  was  to  become 
the  bane  of  our  country. 

These  injunctions  were  carried  out  with 
the  good-health  results  he  had  expected  from 
them,  so  far  as  I  was  concerned.  But  Ed 
ward's  health  was  weak  from  the  first,  and 
even  the  annual  summer  on  a  farm  did  not 
serve  to  repair  the  frailty  of  his  constitu 
tion.  Perhaps  it  saved  him  from  an  early 
decline,  however,  and  certainly  he  enjoyed 
farm  life  and  the  light  tasks  exacted  of  us 
with  quite  all  the  zest  that  boys  of  this  later 
time  feel  in  their  summer  sports  of  a  less 
useful  kind. 

The  great  dread  in  Edward's  case  was  of 
pulmonary  consumption,  the  malady  of  which 
our  father  had  died.  Throughout  his  boy 
hood  Edward  suffered  with  what  I  suppose 

57 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

to  have  been  chronic  bronchitis,  though  the 
doctors  called  it  phthisic,  which  I  take  to  be 
only  another  spelling  of  phthisis,  or  con 
sumption.  It  was  not,  indeed,  until  after  he 
had  passed  middle  life  that  he  completely 
threw  off  this  trouble  and  ceased  to  feel  ap 
prehension  for  his  lungs. 

During  the  year  after  our  father's 
death  our  mother  let  the  farm,  now  greatly 
reduced  in  size,  to  a  tenant,  and  removed 
with  her  four  children  to  the  house  in  Vevay 
in  which  Edward  and  I  had  been  born. 
The  schools  there  were  much  better  than 
any  that  existed  in  the  country.  One  of 
them,  which  Edward  attended  for  a  time, 
when  his  health  permitted — and  that  was 
never  for  long  at  a  time — was  held  in  a  long, 
one-storied,  red  brick  school-house,  that  is 
still  standing,  though  used  now  as  a  dwell 
ing.  The  school  was  taught  successively  by 
several  men,  some  of  them  students  "work 
ing  their  way "  through  college.  Another 
school,  and  a  good  one  in  its  way,  was  kept 

58 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

by  the  Presbyterian  minister  and  his  wife, 
who  in  that  way  eked  out  the  slender  salary 
allowed  them  by  the  Home  Missionary  So 
ciety. 

This  gentleman,  Mr.  Hiram  Wasson, 
was  a  New  Englander,  college  bred,  with 
some  general  culture,  and  possessed  of  the 
gift  of  making  his  pupils  like  him  as  well  as 
respect  him.  He  had  a  gentle,  sunny  natute, 
with  a  spice  of  pleasant  humor  in  it,  which 
he  was  not  too  dignified  to  employ  in  the 
school.  His  wife  was  a  typical  New  England 
school  teacher — a  profession  for  which  she 
had  been  trained — and  she,  too,  had  quali 
ties  that  won  the  pupils. 

The  school  was  held  in  the  Presbyterian 
church,  of  which  Mr.  Wasson  was  pastor. 
With  the  cleverness  which  all  New  England 
men  are  supposed  to  possess,  Mr.  Wasson 
fitted  up  the  church  for  its  double  use,  by 
hinging  a  narrow  board  to  the  back  of  each 
pew.  These  boards  were  provided  with 
supports  below,  and  when  raised  they  served 

59 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

the  purposes  of  desks.  On  Friday  evening 
the  supports  were  removed,  the  boards  hung 
down  the  back  of  the  pews,  arid  the  place 
was  ready  for  use  as  a  church. 

Mr.  Wasson  never  flogged.  His  nature 
was  far  too  gentle  for  that  brutality,  and  his 
ingenuity  was  quite  equal  to  the  task  of 
maintaining  discipline  without  resort  to  it. 
He  invented  a  number  of  devices  by  which 
to  punish  when  punishment  was  necessary. 
These  devices  were  always  good-natured, 
and  usually  there  was  a  touch  of  humor  in 
them,  so  that  they  amused  and  interested  the 
school  instead  of  offending  its  sentiment  of 
justice. 

It  was  in  this  school  chiefly  that  Edward 
and  I  were  taught  during  the  two  or  three 
years  of  our  stay  in  Vevay  at  that  time. 
Something  educationally  much  better  was 
to  come  some  years  later,  when,  after  an 
absence  of  considerable  duration  we  returned 
to  our  native  town,  and  fell  under  the  wise 
government  and  instruction  of  a  gifted 
60 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

woman,  Mrs.  Julia  L.  Dumont,  a  born  edu 
cator,  and  the  wisest  one,  man  or  woman, 
that  I  have  ever  known.  She  was,  indeed,  a 
Dr.  Arnold  in  petticoats.  Of  her  and  her 
influence  upon  Edward's  character  and  mind 
I  shall  write  more  fully  in  a  later  chapter. 
At  the  time  with  which  this  present  chapter 
concerns  itself,  Edward  Eggleston  was  still 
a  little  boy,  acquiring  only  the  rudiments  of 
education.  His  health  was  so  uncertain  that 
his  school  attendance  rarely,  at  any  period 
of  his  boyhood,  continued  for  more  than  a 
few  weeks  without  interruption.  But  when 
too  ill  to  go  to  school,  he  worked  diligently 
at  home,  and  a  good  deal  more  than  kept  up 
with  his  classes. 

Vevay  was  in  some  respects  a  peculiar 
town,  and  life  there  was  quite  different  in 
many  ways,  from  life  in  Southern  Indiana 
generally.  The  town  lies  on  the  bank  of 
the  Ohio  river,  about  sixty  or  seventy  miles 
below  Cincinnati.  It  is  built  on  a  plain,  or 
two  plains  rather,  having  different  levels. 
61 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

The  part  nearest  the  river  is  subject  to  over 
flow  at  times  of  very  high  water,  while  the 
main  part  of  the  town,  lying  upon  the  higher 
plain  near  the  hills,  is  not  troubled  in  that 
way  even  at  the  times  of  the  greatest  freshets. 

Vevay  is  framed  in  hills  of  considerable 
height  and  great  beauty.  In  our  boyhood 
these  hills  were  clad  from  foot  to  crest  in  a 
dense  growth  of  original  beech  forest.  The 
trees  have  since  been  cut  away  in  great  part, 
unfortunately,  but  the  town,  which  was 
attractive  half  a  century  ago,  is  now  the 
most  beautiful  one  I  have  anywhere  seen  in 
America. 

Vevay  was  originally  settled  by  a  com 
pany  of  thrifty  Swiss  immigrants,  near  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  These 
and  their  descendants  gave  to  the  place  and 
the  country  immediately  surrounding  it,  a 
character  quite  different  from  that  of  other 
small  Ohio  river  villages.  They  were  an 
energetic  people  for  one  thing,  and  for 
another  they  had  brought  with  them  from 

62 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

Switzerland  a  healthy  disposition  to  enjoy 
life.  They  built  stoutly  and  with  a  good 
deal  of  attention  to  the  beauty  of  their 
homes  and  their  surroundings,  as  well  as  to 
their  convenience  and  comfort. 

Whether  in  town  or  in  the  country  their 
houses  were  as  spacious  as  their  means  would 
permit  them  to  build,  and  they  were  always 
made  either  of  brick  or  of  wood,  stoutly 
framed.  So  far  as  I  can  learn  not  one  of 
those  people  ever  contented  himself  either 
with  a  log  cabin  or  with  a  slightly  built 
wooden  house.  Not  one  of  them  neglected 
to  give  what  he  could  of  tasteful  ornamen 
tation  to  his  dwelling. 

In  the  country  these  people  always  re 
served  a  considerable  space  from  agricul 
ture  for  house  grounds.  In  the  town  they 
sought  spacious  "lots,"  sometimes  of  half 
an  acre  or  more,  in  which  to  build.  These 
grounds  they  planted  with  fruit  trees,  grape 
vines,  on  ornamental  arbors,  flowering  shrubs 
and  beds  of  dainty  flowers.  These  things 
63 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

and  the  climbing  rose  bushes  and  honey 
suckles  that  were  trained  up  the  walls, 
quickly  robbed  a  home  place  of  its  raw 
newness,  while  in  the  case  of  homes  that  had 
been  established  in  the  earlier  days  of  the 
town,  the  aspect  was  as  calmly  reposeful  as 
that  of  any  old  English  manse.  There  was 
everywhere  scrupulous  cleanliness  and  ex 
quisite  neatness  which  extended  to  every 
detail  of  gardening,  pruning  and  the  like. 
The  region  had  been  an  untouched  wilder 
ness  when  the  Swiss  settlers  first  went  thither, 
about  1802.  They  made  it  literally  "  blos 
som  like  a  rose." 

They  were  a  hardy  race,  too — long  lived 
and  life-enjoying  in  their  comfortable,  unpre 
tentious  ways.  The  fifth  child  born  in  that 
region  after  the  Swiss  settlement  was  made 
still  survives  at  the  age  of  ninety  odd  years. 
When  Edward  and  I  revisited  the  town,  in 
the  spring  of  1900,  we  found  her  enjoying 
life  like  any  youngster.  She  was  known  to 
everybody  as  "  Aunt  Lucy  Detraz,"  and  was 

64 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

always  one  of  the  most  esteemed  and  best 
beloved  women  in  the  community.  When 
Edward  and  I  visited  her  for  the  last  time 
we  found  her  sitting  bolt  upright  doing 
some  exquisite  needlework,  without  glasses 
to  aid  a  vision  which  good  health  had  pre 
served  unimpaired.  She  greeted  us  cheerily, 
saying  to  us  gray-haired  veterans,  in  response 
to  Edward's  question  whether  she  remem 
bered  us  or  not : 

"  Of  course  I  remember  you  boys.  I 
ought  to,  for  I  gave  each  of  you  the  first 
bath  you  ever  had  after  coming  into  this 
world,  and  dressed  you  in  the  first  clothes 
you  ever  wore." 

The  Swiss  settlers  chose  the  site  of 
Vevay  for  their  abiding  place  because  of  its 
real  or  fancied  resemblance  to  their  native 
region  in  Switzerland.  They  gave  the  town 
its  Swiss  name  and,  when  Indiana  became  a 
State,  they  called  their  county  Switzerland. 
Both  names  have  survived. 

But  further  than  that,  they  sought  to 
65 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

transplant  to  their  home  in  the  new  world 
the  industry  they  had  pursued  in  the  old. 
They  cleared  the  rich  plains,  or  "  bottoms," 
as  Western  nomenclature  has  it,  and  planted 
them  with  vineyards.  Thus,  nearly  half  a 
century  before  Nicholas  Longworth  estab 
lished  the  wine  growing  industry  near  Cin 
cinnati,  it  was  flourishing  around  Vevay, 
under  the  skilled  hands  of  a  people  who  had 
been  born  among  the  vines. 

When  Edward  and  I  were  boys  the  vine 
still  constituted  the  principal  crop  of  the 
Swiss  and  their  descendants.  Later  came 
the  great  "  temperance"  wave,  which  not 
only  discouraged  the  making,  selling  or 
drinking  of  any  liquid  that  had  alcohol  in 
it,  but  presently  brought  the  making  of 
wine  into  something  like  actual  disrepute. 
As  this  sentiment  grew  in  intensity,  one 
after  another  of  the  repute-loving  Switzers 
yielded  to  it,  destroying  his  vines  and  turn 
ing  his  attention  to  crops  of  other  kinds. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  character  of 
66 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

the  people  who  constituted  a  considerable 
part  of  Vevay's  population  during  Edward's 
boyhood,  I  may  be  permitted  to  relate  here 
one  incident  of  this  transformation.  Just 
below  the  town  lived  one  of  the  most  thrifty 
of  the  Swiss.  His  vineyards  and  orchards 
were  extensive,  and  his  house — a  large  brick 
structure,  having  one  wing  built  expressly 
for  use  as  a  ball-room,  stood  in  ample  orna 
mental  grounds.  With  him  lived  his  old 
mother,  one  of  the  original  Swiss  born  and 
Swiss  bred  settlers.  The  old  lady  protested 
stoutly  against  the  destruction  of  the  vine 
yards,  saying  that  she  had  been  born  and 
reared  among  vineyards,  as  all  her  ancestors 
had  been,  and  that  she  intended  to  die  with 
the  vines  within  sight.  But  the  popular 
sentiment  in  condemnation  of  wine  grow 
ing  was  becoming  daily  more  intense.  It 
was  beginning  to  be  the  current  opinion  that 
wine  growing  was  not  a  respectable  pursuit, 
and  that  the  wine  grower  belonged  in  one 
class  with  the  keeper  of  a  liquor  shop.  The 
67 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

son  and  master  of  the  house  smarted  under 
such  condemnation  and  was  determined  not 
to  endure  it  longer.  His  old  mother  was 
much  too  feeble  ever  to  leave  the  house,  even 
for  the  purpose  of  taking  a  few  steps  on  the 
ground.  But  she  liked  to  sit  at  a  window 
and  look  out  upon  the  vineyards.  The  son, 
therefore,  made  a  careful  survey  from  every 
window  of  the  house  in  order  to  learn  pre 
cisely  how  much  of  the  vine  lands  could  be 
seen  from  each.  That  done,  he  destroyed 
all  of  the  vineyards  that  lay  beyond  the 
range  of  the  old  lady's  vision,  preserving 
every  vine  that  could  in  any  way  be  seen 
from  the  house.  Thenceforth  he  marketed 
as  fruit  the  grapes  borne  by  such  vines  as 
had  been  spared.  He  thus  saved  his  repu 
tation  from  the  aspersions  even  of  the  most 
intemperate  "temperance"  propagandists, 
while  tenderly  sparing  his  old  mother's  feel 
ings.  She  died  in  the  belief  that  her  whole 
life  to  its  end  had  been  passed  in  the  midst 
of  vineyards. 

68 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

By  the  time  that  Edward  and  I  were  old 
enough  to  know  our  surroundings,  the  Swiss 
people  had  ceased  to  be  in  a  majority  even 
in  the  town,  while  very  few  of  them  or  their 
descendants  lived  more  than  a  few  miles 
away.  Among  our  school  fellows  in  Vevay  the 
Swiss  names  Detraz,  Grisard,  Dufour,  Du- 
mont,  Tardy,  Courvoisseur,  Danglade,  Thie- 
baud  (which  was  corrupted  in  its  pronun 
ciation  into  Kay-bo),  Moreraud,  Le  Clerc, 
Malin,  Golay,  Bettens,  Minnit,  Violet,  Du- 
prez,  Medary,  Schenck,  Girard  and  others 
of  Swiss  origin,  abounded.  But  even  in  the 
town  a  large  part  of  the  small  population  of 
1500  or  1800  was  by  that  time  of  other  than 
Swiss  origin,  while  in  the  country  generally, 
outside  of  Vevay,  there  were  almost  no  peo 
ple  of  Swiss  extraction. 

Southern  Indiana,  with  its  rich  lands, 
and  its  easy  access  to  markets  by  means  of 
the  river,  in  days  when  railroads  had  not 
begun  to  be,  had  been  peculiarly  attractive 
to  settlers  from  every  quarter.  There  were 

69 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

a  number  of  Virginians  there  who,  disliking 
slavery,  had  set  their  negroes  free  and  were 
seeking  to  rebuild  their  fortunes  in  a  new 
country  which  promised  to  grow  rapidly. 
There  were,  in  greater  numbers,  Kentuck- 
ians  who,  like  our  maternal  grandfather, 
had  crossed  the  river  to  aid  in  the  winning 
of  a  new  West,  and  had  mightily  thriven 
there.  There  were  a  good  many  Scotch 
men,  too,  who,  by  their  sturdy  morality, 
speedily  made  themselves  influential  for 
good  in  the  community.  There  were  Penn- 
sylvanians  and  a  small  sprinkling  of  New 
Englanders.  Finally,  there  was  a  consider 
able  number  of  people  from  North  Caro 
lina  and  elsewhere  in  the  South,  who  had  be 
longed  to  the  u  poor  white"  class. 

These  latter  were  always  unthrifty, 
though  they  had  virtues  of  their  own.  They 
drank  too  much  whiskey  when  they  could 
get  it.  They  neglected  their  crops  in  order 
to  go  fishing  and  hunting,  or  frolicking  at 
each  other's  houses.  Very  few  of  them 

r 

70 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

manifested  either  disposition  or  capacity  to 
improve  their  condition,  even  in  a  country 
which  afforded  abundant  opportunity  to 
every  man.  They  were  renters,  nearly  always, 
very  few  of  them  ever  managing  to  become 
the  owners  of  land,  though  fertile  fields 
were  to  be  had  at  small  cost  and  on  long 
credits.  In  hunting  and  fishing  they  were 
tirelessly  energetic,  but  in  work  of  a  more 
profitable  kind  they  were  indolent  and  care 
less.  They  tilled  their  corn  enough  to  make 
it  yield  half  a  crop  perhaps — of  which  one- 
third  went  to  pay  the  rent — but  with  that 
they  were  content.  Any  sort  of  shelter  was 
good  enough  to  satisfy  their  ideas  of  a  home, 
and  as  for  comforts  in  the  house,  they  were 
too  well  used  to  the  absence  of  such  things 
to  miss  them  or  care  for  them. 

But  these  people  were  perfectly  honest, 
and  except  when  in  their  cups,  they  were 
law-abiding.  In  anger  and  under  stimulus 
of  whiskey  they  sometimes,  but  rarely, 
committed  crimes  of  violence,  but  meaner 
71 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

offences  against  the  law  were  almost  unknown 
among  them.  They  were  brave,  and  in 
tensely  pugnacious  under  provocation,  but 
otherwise  they  were  a  kindly,  good-natured 
folk,  and  generous  to  a  fault  when  they  had 
anything  with  which  to  be  generous. 

It  was  among  a  population  thus  diverse 
in  origin  that  the  Hoosier  dialect  had  its 
origin.  Its  variations  from  correct  speech 
were  the  conglomerate  product  of  many 
varieties  of  ignorance.  In  a  large  degree 
they  were  the  result  of  misdirected  efforts 
to  speak  with  more  than  ordinary  accuracy. 
Uneducated  persons  who  observed  that  their 
educated  neighbors  always  said  "get"  and 
"yet"  and  "kettle"  and  the  like  instead  of 
"git"  and  "  yit "  and  "kittle,"  accepted  the 
principle  of  pronunciation  thus  suggested, 
and  misapplied  it.  In  their  anxiety  to  pro 
nounce  correctly,  they  said  "led"  for  "lid," 
"set"  for  "sit,"  and  so  on  through  an  entire 
class  of  words.  In  the  same  way,  finding 
that  the  educated  people  around  them  never 

72 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

spoke  of  a  "  nuss,"  but  said  "  nurse  "  instead, 
the  illiterate  adopted  the  practice  of  saying 
"furse"  when  they  meant  "fuss." 

When  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 
was  in  press  for  publication  in  book  form, 
its  author  had  it  in  mind  to  print  with  it  as 
a  preface,  a  somewhat  extensive  study  of  this 
dialect.  He  wrote  for  that  purpose  an 
essay  of  rare  scholarship  and  abundant 
interest,  and  after  it  was  in  type,  he  aban 
doned  his  purpose  and  suppressed  what  he 
had  written  on  the  subject.  His  reason  for 
doing  so  did  not  seem  to  me  at  the  time  to 
be  adequate,  nor  does  it  seem  so  now.  It  is 
set  forth  as  follows  in  the  brief  preface 
which  was  actually  printed: 

"  It  has  been  in  my  mind  to  append 
some  remarks,  philological  and  otherwise, 
upon  the  dialect,  but  Professor  Lowell's 
admirable  and  erudite  preface  to  the  Biglow 
Papers  must  be  the  despair  of  every  one  who 
aspires  to  write  on  Americanisms.  To  Mr. 
Lowell  belongs  the  distinction  of  being  the 
73 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

only  one  of  our  most  eminent  authors,  and 
the  only  one  of  our  most  eminent  scholars 
who  has  given  careful  attention  to  American 
dialects.  But  while  I  have  not  ventured  to 
discuss  the  provincialisms  of  the  Indiana 
backwoods,  I  have  been  careful  to  preserve 
the  true  usus  loquendi  of  each  locution,  and 
I  trust  my  little  story  may  afford  material 
for  some  one  better  qualified  than  I  to  criti 
cise  the  dialect." 

That  hope  has  never  been  fulfilled.  No 
scholar  has  yet  undertaken  the  philological 
task  suggested.  But  "  The  Hoosier  School 
master"  has  exercised  a  still  more  valuable 
influence  upon  American  letters.  It  has 
been  the  direct  inspiration  of  the  many 
recent  Indiana  writers  who,  in  prose  and 
verse,  have  created  a  Hoosier  literature  of 
enduring  worth.  Indeed,  it  is  scarcely  too 
much  to  claim  for  that  pioneer  work  that  it 
gave  a  broader  impulse  than  even  that,  that 
it  set  the  example  of  utilizing  local  conditions, 
and  depicting  provincial  character,  in  ways 
74 


Vevay  and  the  People  of  Southern  Indiana 

that  are  now  common  to  the  writers  of  fic 
tion  in  every  quarter  of  the  country.  Before 
"TheHoosier  Schoolmaster"  appeared,  only 
Bret  Harte  had  in  any  considerable  degree 
departed  in  that  direction  from  the  beaten 
paths  of  prose  fiction,  and  his  work  had  to 
do  with  phenomenal  social  conditions,  the 
result  of  accident,  as  it  were,  and  quite  radi 
cally  different  from  those  that  existed  in 
other  parts  of  the  country,  and  that  the  suc 
cess  of  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  first 
taught  our  novelists  to  use  as  material. 

It  should  be  explained  that  the  dialect 
and  the  manners  that  were  associated  with 
it,  were  found  chiefly  in  the  remoter  country 
districts.  But  some  traces  of  them  were  dis 
coverable  even  among  those  well-to-do  farm 
ers  and  landowners  whose  thrift  and  ambi 
tion,  even  as  early  as  the  forties,  had  dotted 
the  region  along  the  Ohio  river  with  spacious 
brick  dwellings — most  of  them  with  stately 
colonnaded  porticoes  in  front  and  ornamented 
lawns  surrounding  them.  Association  always 
75 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

does  that  much  for  a  dialect.  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  never  cured  himself  of  the  provin 
cial  New  England  pronunciation  of  "new" 
and  "dew,"  and  of  "house,"  "cow,"  and 
the  like.  It  has  taken  the  efforts  of  three 
generations  of  highly  cultured  school  teachers 
in  New  England  to  root  out  the  slighter 
provincialisms  of  speech  which  even  the 
educated  classes  there  had  adopted  in  child 
hood  from  the  less  cultivated  and  more 
numerous  class. 


CHAPTER  V. 

In  the  Real  Backwoods. 

BOUT  the  year  1850  Edward  and  I 
were  brought  into  closer  contact 
with  the  backwoods  life  of  South 
ern  Indiana  than  ever  before,  and 
his  recollection  of  things  observed  at  that 
time  furnished  no  small  part  of  his  materials 
when  in  later  years  he  came  to  the  task  of 
writing  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  and 
"The  End  of  the  World." 

In  Decatur  county  there  lived  Captain 
William  Lowry,  our  mother's  uncle.  He 
was  a  veteran  of  the  war  of  1812,  and  as  a 
young  man  he  had  "located"  a  large  tract 
of  government  land  in  that  region,  becom 
ing  its  owner  by  virtue  of  the  land  war 
rant  given  to  him  by  the  government  in 
reward  of  his  military  service.  To  this 
domain  he  had  made  large  additions  by  pur- 
77 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

chasing  the  land  warrants  of  other  dis 
charged  volunteers.  He  thus  became  the 
largest  landowner,  and  in  the  end  the  most 
prosperous  man  in  all  that  region. 

When  he  settled  there  about  1818  he 
had  no  white  man  for  neighbor  within  twenty 
miles  of  him.  Indians  were  all  about,  but 
the  pioneer  knew  how  to  deal  with  them  in 
peace-procuring  ways.  Literal  wolves  often 
howled  at  his  house  by  night,  but  the  ener 
getic  pioneer  and  soldier  never  at  any  time 
confronted  the  metaphorical  "wolf  at  the 
door."  He  conquered  his  worst  enemy 
when  he  cleared  the  dense  forests  from  such 
lands  as  he  meant  to  convert  into  fields,  and 
from  the  beginning  he  relied  upon  himself 
for  the  satisfaction  of  all  his  own  and  his 
family's  needs.  As  the  region  settled  some 
what,  he  became  its  most  influential  citizen, 
the  one  to  whom  every  one  in  misfortune 
appealed  for  counsel  and  assistance,  the  one 
whose  word  went  furthest  in  the  decision  of 
all  questions  of  local  public  concern. 

78 


EDWARD   EGGLESTON    IN   1857 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

His  family  grew  rapidly,  as  it  was  the 
custom  of  families  in  that  time  and  country 
to  do.  But  under  the  primitive  way  of 
living  then  practiced,  the  multiplication  of 
children  was  a  help  rather  than  a  hindrance 
to  prosperity. 

And  Captain  William  Lowry  never  de 
parted  from  that  primitive  way  of  living. 
To  the  end  of  his  days  he  and  his  boys  and 
girls  produced  for  themselves  everything 
that  they  needed  to  eat,  drink  and  wear, 
with  the  exception  of  salt,  coffee,  tea,  and, 
toward  the  end,  a  calico  gown  now  and 
then  as  a  bit  of  finery  for  the  women  folk. 
On  the  farm  itself  the  cotton  and  wool 
needed  for  clothing  were  grown,  carded, 
spun,  woven  and  fashioned  into  garments. 
The  blankets  on  the  beds,  as  well  as  the 
quilts  and  sheets  and  pillow-cases — these  lat 
ter  made  always  of  home-grown  linen — were 
produced  in  like  manner.  The  "sugar 
camp  " — a  vast  grove  of  sugar  maple  trees- 
yielded  all  the  sugar  and  molasses  used  on  the 

79 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

place.  From  the  orchards  came,  besides  a 
great  store  of  apples,  an  abundance  of  cider 
and  vinegar,  apple  butter,  peach  butter,  dried 
fruits,  and  a  product  which  I  have  never  seen 
or  heard  of  elsewhere,  but  which  I  regarded 
as  a  rare  delicacy  in  my  boyhood,  namely 
cider  molasses.  The  dairy  yielded  milk, 
cream,  cheese  and  butter  in  lavish  abundance. 
The  poultry  yards  produced  more  than  the 
home  demand  called  for,  but  the  surplus  was 
never  sold.  Much  of  it  was  given  away  in  my 
time  to  less  fortunate  folk  who,  either  by 
reason  of  the  poverty  of  unthrift,  or  because 
of  their  misfortune  in  living  in  the  village 
near  by,  were  unable  to  supply  themselves 
with  such  things.  Beef,  pork,  bacon  and 
mutton  were  all  products  of  the  farm.  The 
grain  was  ground  in  near-by  water  mills,  the 
miller  taking  toll  for  grinding  it. 

I  think  in  all  his  life  this  "uncle  Will" 

of  ours  never  had  a  servant  or  a  hired  helper 

of  any  kind  in  his  house.     All  the  work  of 

the  household  was  done  by  the   members  of 

so 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

the  family  working  together  in  willing  co 
operation,  making  something  of  a  frolic  out 
of  much  of  the  work,  and  not  one  of  them 
ever  having  work  enough  to  do  to  bring 
weariness  as  its  reward. 

The  house  was  a  generously  hospitable 
one.  There  was  rarely  a  time  when  there 
were  not  some  of  the  numerous  relatives 
staying  there,  as  all  of  them  so  loved  to  do, 
and  the  place  was  a  kind  of  Mecca  to  them 
all.  Strangers  were  entertained,  too,  when 
ever  their  paths  led  them  into  that  region, 
but  no  presence,  whether  of  visiting  kins 
folk,  or  of  passing  strangers,  was  ever  suf 
fered  to  make  the  smallest  difference  in  the 
family  life.  Whether  there  were  many  guests 
or  none  in  the  house  there  was  always  an 
abundantly  laden  table  and  beds  in  plenty. 
There  was -singing  in  the  evening,  and,  if 
the  weather  was  cold,  there  was  always  a 
gathering  of  children,  and  often  of  young 
men  and  maidens,  around  the  great  wood 
fires  where  nuts  were  cracked  and  apples 

81 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

roasted,  while  one  or  more  of  the  girls 
played  a  merrily  humming  accompaniment 
on  her  spinning  wheel.  Some  of  the  girls 
liked  spinning — some  did  not.  Those  who 
liked  it  did  it ;  those  that  did  not,  let  it  alone. 
That  was  the  spirit  in  which  all  things  were 
done  in  the  house  and  ^on  the  farm. 

Something — I  know  not  what — induced 
our  mother,  about  1850,  to  close  our  home 
in  Vevay  and  send  Edward  and  me  to  this 
pioneer  home  to  live  for  a  year  or  more. 
Edward  remained  on  the  farm  for  only  a 
brief  time,  after  which  he  went  to  the  neigh 
boring  village  of  Milford,  or  Clifty,  in 
order  that  he  might  "  clerk"  in  a  store  there 
and  pursue  his  studies  under  tuition  of  a 
.young  man  in  the  store  who  had  had  some  edu 
cational  advantages.  But  as  the  village  lay 
only  about  a  mile  away,  Edward  was  often 
at  the  farm,  and  saw  much  of  its  peculiar 
and  interesting  life.  He  saw  much  else,  too, 
during  that  year,  which  he  afterwards  turned 
to  literary  account. 

82 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

At  the  time  of  our  stay  there,  Decatur 
county  was  completely  and  typically  a  "back 
woods"  region.  Only  a  small  part  of  the 
scattered  population  had  attended  even  such 
schools  as  existed  in  the  country  districts  of 
Southern  Indiana.  Only  here  and  there — 
chiefly  in  Greensburg,  the  county  seat, — was 
there  a  young  man  who  had  spent  a  year  in 
boarding  school.  The  majority  of  the  men 
and  women  in  that  primitive  and  sparsely 
settled  country  were  illiterate,  or  very  nearly 
so,  not  so  much  by  any  fault  of  their  own  as 
because  they  had  lacked  opportunity.  The 
only  school-house  I  can  now  remember  in  all 
the  region  round  about,  was  one  which  our 
great-uncle,  Captain  Lowry,  had  built  on  the 
outskirts  of  his  own  farm,  to  be  used  rent 
free  by  any  wandering  schoolmaster  who 
might  succeed  in  securing  "  scholars  "  enough 
to  justify  him  in  keeping  school.  This 
happened  only  occasionally.  It  happened 
once  during  our  year  in  Decatur  county. 
At  that  time  a  man  named  Higgins  opened 

83 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

a  pay  school  there,  and  taught  it  for 
three  months.  He  eked  out  the  meagre 
income  derived  from  the  school  by  teaching 
a  singing  school  every  Saturday  afternoon 
and  Sunday  morning. 

There  was  an  abundance  of  volume  in 
his  voice,  I  remember,  but  his  only  knowl 
edge  of  music  consisted  of  an  ability  to  sing 
by  "  numeral  notes,"  a  system  then  much  in 
vogue  in  the  remoter  parts  of  the  country. 
Instead  of  a  musical  scale,  there  were  two 
parallel  lines  between  which  numbers  were 
printed.  One  stood  for  do,  two  for  re,  three 
for  mi,  four  for  /<?//,  and  so  on  to  eight, 
which  stood  for  do  again.  If  a  numeral  was 
printed  above  or  below  the  parallel  lines  it 
indicated  that  it  was  to  be  sung  an  octave 
above  or  below.  Instead  of  soprano,  bass, 
alto  and  tenor,  the  four  parts  were  tenor, 
treble,  counter  and  bass,  the  word  tenor  sig 
nifying  the  "air"  of  the  tune,  to  be  sung  by 
soprano  voices.  That  use  of  the  word  was 
logical  and  etymological  at  any  rate. 

84 


I  n      the      Re&l      Backwoods 

The  singing  school  was  maintained  by 
subscription — just  as  more  pretentious  operas 
and  concerts  are  at  present.  And  like  our 
opera,  its  sessions  constituted  important 
social  functions.  All  the  young  men  of  the 
neighborhood  subscribed  the  price  fixed 
upon.  The  young  women  were  deemed  to 
contribute  their  sufficient  share  merely  by 
gracing  the  sessions  with  their  presence. 
The  little  boys  and  girls  also  came  without 
charge. 

The  singing  school  was  in  many  ways  a 
minister  to  culture  of  the  backwoods  kind, 
to  social  intercourse  and  to  courtship  and 
marriage.  Young  men  in  that  region  never 
escorted  young  women  to  singing  school  or 
to  church ;  but  when  the  exercises  in  either 
case  were  at  an  end,  every  young  man  who 
could  screw  his  courage  up  "to  the  sticking 
point,"  would  mount  his  horse,  ride  up  to 
the  side  of  the  damsel  he  wished  to  cultivate, 
and  stammeringly  ask  her  "  May  I  see  you 
safe  home?  " 

85 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

There  was  good  reason  for  trepidation, 
indeed.     For  the  "  eternal  feminine  "  was  as 
strongly  self-assertive  in  those  young  women 
of  the    backwoods    as    it  is    in   any  belle  of 
our    day,   while   their  disposition   to    assert 
themselves  in  rather  free  and  easy  ways  was 
not    curbed    by    any    excessive    regard    for 
the    nicer    courtesies    of    life.     If    a    young 
man's  attentions  were  unwelcome  to  the  girl 
chosen   for  their  object,  or  if  the  girl  hap 
pened  to  be  pretty  and  inclined  to  coquetry, 
she  was  apt  to  bring   a  rude  and  well  worn 
wit  to  bear  for  his  discomfiture.     When,  in 
the  conventional  phrase,  he  asked  u  May   I 
see  you  safe  home  ?  "  she  would  answer  "  Yes, 
if  you'll  ride  on   ahead  and  sit  on  our  front 
fence    till  I  get  there."     There  were  other 
formulae  sometimes  used  on  either  side,  but 
the    one    given    will    serve    as    a    sufficient 
example. 

For  the  most  part  the  girls  graciously 
accepted  the  proffered  escort,  unless  the 
man  offering  it  happened  to  be  especially  dis- 

86 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

agreeable,  or  unless,  by  superior  prompti 
tude,  his  offer  of  escort  had  anticipated  that 
of  some  other  and  more  favored  youth,  upon 
whose  present  coming  the  girl  counted  with 
hope  and  confidence. 

Even  in  this  unvarnished  society  there 
were  well  understood  conventions  govern 
ing  social  intercourse.  Upon  arriving  at  her 
home  the  girl's  behavior  toward  her  escort 
very  nicely  marked  the  extent  of  her  favor, 
or  the  lack  of  it.  If  she  thanked  him  for 
his  attention,  and  dismissed  him  with  a 
prompt  "  good-day,"  it  meant  that  he  had 
had  his  trouble  for  his  pains,  or  something 
like  that.  If  she  were  a  trifle  more  gracious, 
and  bade  him  call  again,  it  signified  that  she 
liked  him  well  enough,  but  was,  as  yet,  at 
least  a  trifle  indifferent  to  any  attractions  he 
might  possess.  If  she  invited  him  to  u  have 
dinner  with  us,"  the  fact  involved  at  least  so 
much  of  "  encouragement  "  as  might  justify 
him  in  further  attempts  to  win  her  favor. 
Of  course,  the  tone  and  manner  in  each  case 

87 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

modified  the  general  significance  of  the 
words,  as  they  always  do  when  maidens  are 
at  the  age  of  choosing  and  are  dealing  with 
possible  or  probable  suitors.  Such-  things 
"come  by  nature"  to  women  of  the  back 
woods  as  surely  as  to  women  of  the  drawing- 
room. 

The  sturdy  virtues  of  manliness,  honesty 
and  industry  among  men,  and  a  proud  self- 
respect  among  women,  were  strongly  marked 
in  this  typically  western,  backwoods  com 
munity.  But  many  petty  superstitions  sur 
vived  among  them,  and  even  the  more  intel 
ligent  of  them  were  credulous  in  strange 
ways.  The  scientific  habit  of  mind  was 
completely  lacking.  The  weather  warnings 
of  patent  medicine  almanacs  were  accepted 
as  confidently  as  the  advertised  nostrums 
themselves  were  taken,  in  spite  of  the  fre 
quent  failure  of  both.  Young  women  swal 
lowed  chickens'  hearts  whole  with  incanta 
tions  that  were  believed  to  smooth  the  path 
way  of  true  love.  Such  physicians  as  lived 

88 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

in  those  parts  found  annoyingly  successful 
rivals  in  practice  in  the  persons  of  ignorant 
old  crones, — such  as  Edward  described  in 
Granny  Sanders, — whose  simples,  gathered 
at  the  right  time  of  the  moon,  were  firmly 
believed  to  work  well-nigh  miraculous  cures. 
Still  more  confident  was  the  popular  faith  in 
the  pretensions  of  certain  claimants  to  occult 
powers.  I  remember  hearing  a  weird  and 
awe-inspiring  tale  of  the  success  of  one  of 
these  in  curing  disease  without  so  much  as 
seeing  his  patient.  The  story  was  told  to 
me  in  the  dense  forest,  during  a  'coon  hunt 
at  midnight.  It  was  related  that  some  man 
in  chopping  wood  had  split  his  own  foot 
nearly  in  two ;  that  after  hours  of  effort,  the 
physician  who  had  been  called  in  declared 
that  he  could  in  no  way  stop  the  hemorrhage, 
and  that  the  man  must  bleed  to  death ;  that 
thereupon  a  messenger  was  sent  at  midnight 
to  wake  the  occult  healer  and  invoke  his 
assistance ;  that  the  man  of  mysterious 
powers,  without  rising  from  his  bed,  had 

89 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

bidden  the  messenger  return,  for  that  the 
bleeding  was  now  stopped;  and  finally,  that 
it  did  cease  at  precisely  the  time  of  the  healer's 
declaration  of  the  fact. 

Let  us  not  laugh  too  derisively  over  the 
credulity  of  a  simple,  unlearned  people  as 
illustrated  in  this  story.  Let  us  reflect  that 
even  in  our  highly  scientific  time,  in  our  most 
advanced  communities,  there  are  scores  of 
thousands  of  educated  men  and  women  who 
not  only  believe  in  healings  equally  absurd, 
but  are  almost  belligerent  in  their  assertion 
of  their  faith,  and  quite  lavish  in  their  gifts 
of  money  for  the  building  of  marble  temples 
in  which  to  teach  and  propagate  their  doc 
trine  of  "absent  treatment"  by  faith  alone. 
A  foolish  credulity  seems  quite  as  prevalent 
among  the  educated  people  of  an  enlightened 
time  as  among  those  who  lacked  the  knowl 
edge  and  the  intellectual  training  which  are 
supposed  to  eradicate  such  credulity  from 
the  mind.  Superstition  is,  perhaps,  a  matter 
of  mental  constitution  rather  than  of  mental 
90 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

condition  as  affected  by  education.  Years 
after  he  had  finished  his  work  of  portraying 
the  rude  ignorance  of  the  Hoosiers,  Edward 
Eggleston  wrote  "The  Faith  Doctor,"  to 
show  forth  the  worse  credulity  of  men  and 
women  who  had  not  the  Hoosiers'  plea  of 
ignorance  to  excuse  their  weakness  of  mind. 

In  this  interior  county  the  Hoosier  dia 
lect  was  far  more  generally  employed  than 
in  the  regions  along  the  Ohio  river.  In  the 
river  counties  there  was  a  considerable  num 
ber  of  educated  families  in  which  the  speech 
of  the  children  was  jealously  guarded  against 
contamination.  In  Decatur  there  were  no 
such  families,  the  best  educated  people  there 
— except  for  a  doctor  here  and  there,  and 
possibly  a  preacher  or  two — were  such  as 
had  received  nothing  more  than  the  training 
of  the  country  schools,  supplemented  in  a 
very  few  cases  by  a  year  or  less  in  some 
country  boarding  school. 

The  people  were  all  Americans — nearly 
all  Hoosiers  by  birth.  The  few  who,  like 
91 


The      First     of    The     Hoosiers 

Captain  Lowry,  had  been  born  in  Kentucky, 
had  lived  so  long  in  Indiana  as  to  be  in  no 
marked  way  unlike  their  Hoosier-born  neigh 
bors  in  manner  and  speech.  There  were  no 
foreigners  there,  and  no  persons  of  imme 
diate  descent  from  foreigners,  to  influence 
the  dialect.  There  was,  indeed,  no  modify 
ing  influence  of  any  kind  to  serve  as  a  cor 
rective.  The  schoolmaster,  Higgins,  already 
mentioned,  made  some  effort  in  that  direc 
tion,  but  it  was  badly  misguided.  He  taught 
us  to  give  full  orthoepic  force  to  the  "w" 
in  "sword,"  and  the  "  t "  in  "often"  and 
"soften,"  to  pronounce  the  word  "only" 
with  a  short  "o,"  and  "Niagara"  as  if  it 
had  been  spelled  "  Nee-ogg-ara."  The  Yan 
kee  schoolmistress,  with  her  trained  intelli 
gence,  was  bravely  combating  the  dialect  and 
the  ignorance,  of  which  it  was  a  symptom,  in 
the  river  towns.  But  she  had  not  yet  ap 
peared  in  the  interior. 

In  such  homes  as  that  of  Captain  Lowry 
it  was   the   custom    to   subscribe  for  one  or 

92 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

two  weekly  story  papers.  The  favorites 
were  the  Cincinnati  Dollar  Times,  the  Saturday 
Evening  Post  of  Philadelphia,  and  the  Flag  of 
Our  Union,  published  in  Boston.  The  serials 
and  short  stories  published  in  these  periodi 
cals  were  of  no  particular  value,  but  they 
were  at  any  rate  quite  harmless,  and  they 
were  entertaining  to  simple  minds.  It  was 
the  practice  to  have  them  read  aloud  by  the 
evening  fireside,  after  which  the  papers  con 
taining  them  were  loaned  to  such  of  the 
neighbors  as  could  read  them  but  were  too 
poor  to  subscribe. 

There  was  no  library  of  any  kind  any 
where  in  all  that  region,  and  I  cannot  remem 
ber  that,  during  our  stay  of  a  year  in  Decatur 
county,  I  ever  saw  in  any  house  a  book,  other 
than  school  text  books,  with  the  exception 
of  a  paper-bound  temperance  novel  by  T.  S. 
Arthur. 

The  only  educative  influence  that  was 
brought  to  bear  was  that  of  the  preachers, 
chiefly  Methodists.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
93 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

exaggerate  the  service  to  civilization  ren 
dered  by  the  itinerant  circuit  riders  of  that 
peculiarly  militant  church,  at  a  time  when,  to 
quote  from  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster," 
the  West  "  bade  fair  to  become  a  perdition 
as  bad  as  any  that  Brother  Sodom  ever 
depicted." 

These  traveling  Methodist  preachers 
were,  in  many  cases,  men  of  scanty  educa 
tion,  but  they  knew  by  heart  the  message 
they  were  charged  to  deliver,  and  they  were 
mightily  in  earnest.  Their  speech  might  be 
ungrammatical  at  times,  but  their  zeal  was 
white  hot  with  the  fervor  of  conviction,  and 
their  eloquence  lost  nothing  of  effectiveness 
by  reason  of  the  rudeness  of  their  rhetoric 
or  the  inaccuracy  of  their  diction.  Each  of 
those  men  firmly  believed  that  he  had  been 
called  of  God  to  this  service,  and  each  felt 
as  the  Apostle  did— "  Woe  is  me  if  I  preach 
not  the  gospel." 

The  itinerant  system,  too,  was  peculiarly 
well  adapted  to  the  time  and  country.  It 
94 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

effectually  prevented  the  Methodist  preach 
ers  from  forming  local  ties  of  any  kind  or 
creating  local  prejudices  that  might  impair 
their  effectiveness.  It,  and  the  poverty 
which  accompanied  it,  kept  them  foot-loose 
of  all  worldly  things,  and  made  of  their 
ministry  the  one  concern  of  their  lives. 
Their  work  was  essentially  missionary  in 
character,  and  its  effectiveness  was  as  pro 
nounced  as  had  been  that  of  the  Jesuit  mis 
sionaries,  of  an  earlier  time,  among  the  In 
dians  and  half-breeds. 

The  theology  of  these  men  was  often 
harsh,  and  it  was  always  rude  and  literal  in 
its  interpretations,  but  it  was  such  as  the 
people  to  whom  they  preached  could  under 
stand  and  accept.  They  believed  in  the 
literal  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures,  and  they 
interpreted  the  Bible,  in  its  English  version, 
which  alone  they  knew,  with  absolute  confi 
dence  that  every  word  was  true,  and  that 
every  word  meant  precisely  what  it  appeared 
to  mean.  They  believed  in  an  actual  hell, 

95 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

of  fire  and  brimstone,  and  they  preached 
that  doctrine  as  a  truth  which  could  not  be 
doubted,  and  need  not  be  argued.  God  had 
said  it,  and  there  was  an  end  of  discussion. 
They  believed  in  a  personal  devil,  and  in  his 
constant  presence  at  every  elbow  as  the 
tempter  to  sin. 

The  effect  of  the  preaching  of  these 
earnest  men  as  a  morally  educative  force  in 
a  rude  and  ignorant  community,  was  of 
necessity  very  great.  Even  when  it  influenced 
men's  minds  chiefly  through  fear,  it  prompted 
them  to  good  conduct  as  one  of  the  neces 
sary  means  of  keeping  out  of  an  eternal  hell 
of  quenchless  fire. 

But  the  preachers  were  educators  in 
other  ways.  They  were  themselves  better 
educated  than  men  in  that  community  gen 
erally  were,  for  though  many  of  them  began 
their  work  with  exceedingly  meagre  school 
ing  behind  it,  they  were  subject,  as  preachers, 
to  the  ceaseless  and  perfectly  fearless  admoni 
tion  of  older  ministers,  and  especially  of 
96 


In      the      ReaJ      Backwoods 

their  "  Presiding  Elders,"  whose  duty  it  was 
to  give  minute  attention  to  the  conduct, 
methods  and  training  of  the  ministers  under 
their  jurisdiction.  Their  admonitory  super 
vision  was  supported  by  adequate  ecclesiasti 
cal  authority,  and  their  advice  was  accepted 
as  a  command. 

Sometimes  ludicrous  results  occurred. 
I  remember  one  case  related  in  my  presence 
by  an  old  Presiding  Elder.  He  said  that 
upon  one  occasion,  when  going  down  the 
Ohio  river  on  a  steamboat,  he  had  for  com 
panion  a  youthful  minister  whose  bringing 
up  had  been  of  the  rudest  kind.  The  two 
were  assigned  to  a  single  stateroom,  and  the 
Presiding  Elder,  observing  in  the  young  man 
a  regrettable  neglect  of  personal  cleanliness, 
gently  reproved  him.  Among  other  things  he 
told  the  uncouth  youth  that  he  should  brush 
his  teeth  every  morning.  The  young  man 
meekly  accepted  the  chiding  as  a  godly  ad 
monition,  and  in  the  morning  when  the  two 
arose,  he  said  to  his  mentor,  "  I'm  going  to 
97 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

begin  at  once,  and  this  morning  I  have 
used  your  tooth-brush.  When  we  go  ashore 
I'll  buy  one  for  myself." 

"No,"  answered  the  older  man,  scarcely 
able  to  suppress  a  laugh,  "you  may  spare 
yourself  that  expense.  In  recognition  of 
your  effort  to  profit  by  my  suggestions,  I'll 
make  you  a  present  of  that  tooth-brush." 

The  Presiding  Elders  gave  attention 
also  to  the  studies  of  the  younger  men,  for 
certain  studies  were  marked  out  for  them  by 
ecclesiastical  authority,  with  a  view  to  the 
repair  of  their  educational  deficiencies.  Chief 
among  these  studies  was  English  grammar, 
through  the  diligent  study  of  which  it  was 
hoped  that  every  young  minister  would 
presently  learn  to  use  a  better  English  than 
that  which  he  had  learned  from  association. 
This  result  was  not  always  realized.  I  well 
remember  that  one  able  and  even  eloquent 
preacher,  past  middle  life,  and  sufficiently 
prominent  to  be  assigned  successively  to  the 
charge  of  the  best  churches  in  the  larger 

98 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

towns,  always  said  that   u  John  the  Baptist 
had  went  out  into  the  wilderness." 

One  who  had  served  long  as  Presiding 
Elder,  used  to  tell  of  a  minister  who,  when 
called  to  account  for  his  persistently  ungram- 
matical  speech,  tearfully  expressed  regret, 
and  added :  "  Brethren,  I  can't  help  it.  For 
years  I  have  carried  a  grammar  in  my  hat, 
but  for  the  life  of  me  I  can't  get  it  into  my 
head." 

Notwithstanding  these  occasional  fail 
ures  of  the  system,  the  young  preachers 
generally  improved  rapidly  under  this  educa 
tional  system,  so  that  as  a  rule  the  pulpit  was 
an  exemplar  of  a  much  better  rhetorical 
usage  than  any  that  the  people  heard  else 
where;  more  important  still,  these  preachers 
were  expected  to  read  the  weekly  denomina 
tional  newspapers,  together  with  a  book  now 
and  then,  so  that  their  intellectual  field  of 
vision  became  somewhat  larger  than  that  of 
the  majority  of  the  people  to  whom  they 
preached. 

99 


The     First     of    The      Hoosiers 

At  the  time  of  Edward  Eggleston's 
stay  in  Decatur  county,  there  survived  in 
that  region  a  band  of  outlaws,  with  whose 
doings  Edward  became  acquainted  through 
the  arrest  and  trial  of  some  of  them.  In 
earlier  days  it  had  been  the  practice  of  these 
men  to  follow  travelers  on  the  highway,  and 
rob  and  sometimes  kill  them  in  secluded 
places  along  the  road.  In  aid  of  their  nefa 
rious  business,  they  leagued  with  themselves 
a  number  of  roadside  innkeepers.  Soon 
after  the  luckless  traveler  established  himself 
at  an  inn,  two  or  three  of  the  gang,  pretend 
ing  to  be  strangers  in  those  parts,  wrould 
ride  up  and  ask  accommodations  for  the 
night.  That  done,  the  robbery  was  easily 
managed,  and  the  victim,  stripped  of  every 
valuable  possession,  including  his  horse,  was 
left  to  pursue  his  journey  penniless  and  on 
foot. 

Popular  indignation  over  such  occur 
rences  led  to  a  lynching  or  two,  and  the 
bolder  operations  of  the  gang  were  brought 
100 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

to  an  end.  The  former  highwaymen  degen 
erated  into  burglars  and  petty  thieves.  But 
during  Edward  Eggleston's  stay  in  Milford, 
or  Clifty,  as  the  little  village  in  Decatur 
county  was  variously  called,  the  band  was 
reorganized  for  predatory  purposes,  by  a 
man  of  considerable  education,  great  shrewd 
ness  and,  to  all  appearance,  conspicuously 
blameless  life.  Its  headquarters  in  the  older 
highway  robbery  times  had  been  in  the  ad 
joining  county  of  Ripley.  But  the  new 
master  of  the  organization  lived  at  Clifty, 
and,  under  his  directions,  its  operations  were 
carried  on  mainly  in  Decatur  county. 

The  secret  organization  was  at  last  dis 
covered  and  broken  up.  Some  of  its  mem 
bers,  unable  to  give  bail,  were  tried,  con 
victed  and  sent  to  the  penitentiary.  Some 
failed  of  conviction  for.  lack  of  sufficient 
evidence.  These  were  forced  to  leave  the 
county  and  the  State  under  threats  of  lynch 
ing.  The  highly  moral  leader  of  the  gang 
gave  bail,  forfeited  it  and  disappeared.  He 

1U1 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

was    the    original    of    Dr.    Small    in    "The 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster." 

Edward  was  only  a  boy  at  the  time  of 
the  discovery  of  this  gang,  and  the  shock 
of  this  revelation  of  depravity  on  the  part 
of  men  whom  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
see  in  the  guise  of  good  citizens,  so  afflicted 
his  sensitive  mind  that  for  a  time  he  fell  ill. 
It  was  altogether  natural  that,  when  he  came 
to  write  his  first  novel  of  Hoosier  life,  he 
should  draw  upon  this  memory  of  his  boy 
hood  for  the  materials  of  his  plot. 

It  was  during  that  year,  in  the  real  back 
woods,  too,  that  he  made  his  most  fruitful 
observations  of  Hoosier  life,  Hoosier  char 
acter  and  the  Hoosier  dialect.  For  there,  for 
the  first  and  only  time  in  his  life,  he  encoun 
tered  these  things  in  their  purity,  unmixed 
with  anything  higher  or  better.  He  learned 
to  know  how  much  of  human  goodness, 
how  much  of  manly  and  womanly  virtue 
there  may  be  among  people  of  homely  ap 
pearance,  uncouth  manners  and  rude  speech. 

102 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

He  here  saw  human  nature  undisguised  by 
the  artificialities  of  culture,  and  learned  to 
respect  it  and  love  it  for  what  it  is,  rather 
than  for  anything  it  pretends  to  be. 

How  valuable  all  this  was  to  him  as  a 
preparation  for  the  work  he  was  destined  to 
do  in  life,  will  be  best  seen  by  the  reader 
who  realizes  the  unity  of  that  work.  In  his 
novels  of  the  Hoosier  life,  and  the  early  life 
of  Minnesota,  Edward  Eggleston  was 
minutely  depicting  certain  phases  of  that 
"Life  in  the  United  States  "  which  in  later 
years  he  chose  as  his  special  field  of  histori 
cal  research  and  historical  writing.  In  those 
later  novels,  whose  scenes  were  in  other 
fields,  he  was  inspired  by  a  like  purpose  to 
show  forth  phases  of  American  life  which 
had  come  under  his  close  personal  observa 
tion.  In  his  novels  quite  as  truly  as  in 
"The  Beginners  of  a  Nation"  and  "The 
Transit  of  Civilization,"  he  was  writing  his 
tory  of  that  kind  which  most  strongly  ap 
pealed  to  his  mind — history  which  concerns 
103 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

itself  far  less  with  public  events  than  with 
the  life  forces,  the  manners,  circumstances, 
influences  and  ways  of  thinking  among  the 
people,  out  of  which  not  only  public  events 
but  institutions  themselves  have  grown.  In 
his  view  every  detail  of  the  popular  life  and 
thought  was  of  importance,  every  circum 
stance  that  had  influenced  men's  lives  and 
men's  minds  was  worth  recording.  These 
things  he  held  to  be  the  seeds  of  history, 
and  in  all  his  work,  whether  fiction  or  formal 
history,  it  was  his  endeavor  to  study  these 
seeds,  to  recall  their  sprouting,  and  to  dis 
cover  in  their  growth  the  origin  of  the  insti 
tutions,  the  habits,  the  customs,  the  life  of 
our  later  time. 

This  thought  is  not  mine  but  his,  though 
I  present  it  with  less  of  reserve  than  his 
modesty  exacted  of  him  when  he  first  com 
municated  it  to  me. 

This  he  did  in  a  letter  written  to  me 
from  Europe  early  in  1880.  In  it  he  told 
me  that  he  purposed  to  devote  the  next  ten 
104 


In      the      Real      Backwoods 

years  of  his  life  to  the  writing  of  a  series  of 
books  which  together  should  constitute  a 
"  History  of  Life  in  the  United  States." 

In  that  letter  concerning  his  plans  and 
purposes,  he  said  something  like  this  to  me : 

u  After  all  this  work  will  not  differ  in 
essentials  from  what  I  have  been  doing  hith 
erto.  The  historical  form  is  more  ambitious 
— or  perhaps  you  will  say  more  pretentious 
— but,  as  I  look  back  over  my  work  in  fiction, 
I  begin  to  see  clearly  that  every  chapter  of  it 
was  inspired  by  the  same  purpose  that  actu 
ates  me  now.  My  interest  in  my  work  has 
been  that  of  a  student  intent  upon  tracing 
the  forces  of  life  in  America  to  their  origins, 
and  showing  how  men  and  women  lived  and 
thought  and  felt,  under  conditions  that 
existed  before  those  of  to-day  came  into 
being.  So  that  I  am  not  making  a  new  de 
parture  now  or  entering  a  new  field.  I  have 
been  writing  history  all  the  time  in  my  novels. 
I  am  going  now  to  write  the  same  kind  of 
history,  in  a  somewhat  different  form." 
105 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

I  cannot  offer  the  foregoing  passage  as 
a  quotation.  But  the  facts  recorded  in  it 
deeply  impressed  me  at  the  time,  and  I  am 
certain  that  my  paraphrase  of  the  words  is 
substantially  accurate,  though  made  only 
from  memory.  The  thought  that  underlies 
them  seems  to  me  a  fruitful  one,  helpful  to 
every  reader  who  would  justly  understand 
the  purpose  of  a  life  work  that  has  gained 
for  its  author  a  high  place  in  the  esteem  and 
affection  of  his  fellow  men. 


106 


CHAPTER    VI. 

The    Environment    of    the    Hoosier    Boy. 


D 


URING  our  year  in  Decatur  county 
our  mother  was  married  to  the 
Rev.  Williamson  Terrell,  a  Metho 
dist  minister  of  ability  and  some 
culture.  After  a  few  months  Edward  and  I 
were  summoned  to  our  new  home  in  New 
Albany,  where  Mr.  Terrell  was  pastor  of  the 
principal  church. 

Edward's  health  was  now  so  much 
strengthened  by  his  year  of  backwoods  life 
that  he  resumed  his  studies  in  a  rather  pre 
tentious  but  fairly  good  "  Collegiate  Insti 
tute,"  presided  over  by  one  Ayer  or  Ayres. 
The  boy  had  acquired  a  speaking  acquaint 
ance  with  French  while  living  as  a  child 
among  the  Swiss  in  Vevay.  This  language 
he  took  up  again  at  the  Collegiate  Institute, 
and  there  he  began  the  study  of  Latin  and 
107 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

algebra  and  geometry,  having  completed  his 
mastery  of  arithmetic  under  tuition  of  the 
young  store-clerk  at  Clifty. 

As  usual  his  ambition  and  his  almost 
preternatural  energy  in  study  outran  his 
strength  and  quickly  exhausted  it.  He 
quitted  school  after  a  month  or  two,  but  in 
that  time  he  had  learned  enough  of  Latin 
to  read  Caesar,  and  as  soon  as  the  first 
severity  of  his  illness  was  past  he  returned 
to  his  studies,  with  only  himself  for  his 
master.  Almost  all  his  education  was  got  in 
that  way,  indeed.  He  rarely  attended  any 
school  for  more  than  a  few  weeks,  or  a  few 
months  at  most,  before  falling  ill.  But  ex 
cept  while  the  attack  of  illness  was  at  its 
worst,  he  never  ceased  to  study. 

When  he  could  no  longer  attend  school, 
and  when  a  wise  exercise  of  parental  author 
ity  imposed  certain  sharp  limitations  upon 
his  hours  of  self-imposed  study,  he  joined 
with  me  in  a  number  of  boyish  occupations 
of  a  time-killing  character.  I  was  at  that 
108 


The    Environments    of    the   Hoosier    Boy 

period  of  my  life  neither  disposed  nor  accus 
tomed  to  waste  the  hours  out  of  school  in 
the  drudgery  of  study.  I  had  a  faculty  of 
quick  perception  and  a  positively  glutinous 
memory,  so  that  half  an  hour's  work  over 
my  books  each  evening  was  quite  all  I  needed 
to  enable  me  to  maintain  a  good  standing  in 
my  classes.  Had  I  been  ambitious  of  dis 
tinction  in  school  another  half  hour  of  study 
each  evening  would  easily  have  placed  and 
kept  me  at  the  very  head  of  all  my  classes. 
I  was  content,  however,  with  a  place  in  the 
upper  half  of  them,  and  I  gave  all  the  rest 
of  the  hours  out  of  school,  and  the  whole  of 
every  Saturday,  to  recreation.  In  company 
with  a  chum  of  mine,  I  moulded  and  burnt 
miniature  bricks — each  bearing  the  initials 
of  the  two  young  manufacturers,  in  relief, 
upon  its  surface.  Edward  would  have  noth 
ing  to  do  with  this  "  mud-pie  making  "  as  he 
called  it;  but  when  Charley  Van  Dusen  and 
I  advanced  a  step,  and,  from  being  brick- 
makers,  became  architects  and  builders,  Ed- 

109 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

ward  interested  himself  in  our  work,  helping 
us  to  construct  Greek  and  Roman  temples 
out  of  our  little  bricks,  and  incidentally 
teaching  us  something  of  the  achievements 
of  the  ancients  in  art  and  architecture.  He 
related  to  us  also,  pretty  nearly  all  he  knew 
of  classical  mythology,  adopting  a  method 
which  I  remember  was  puzzling  and  painful 
to  my  more  prosaic  mind.  Thus,  when  we 
would  wander  on  a  Saturday  out  among  the 
"  knobs,"  as  the  hills  near  New  Albany  were 
called,  Edward  would  sit  down  in  the  woods, 
by  a  waterfall,  and  say  to  me  something  like 
this : 

"We  are  in  a  spirit-haunted  woodland 
now;  let  me  tell  you  about  it.  The  reason 
that  waterfall  is  so  beautiful  is  that  a  water 
nymph  lives  there  and  controls  every  drop 
of  the  water.  When  we  mortals  are  here  she 
allows  nothing  to  be  seen  except  what  we  see 
now;  but  when  there  are  no  mortals  about, 
she  gathers  around  her  the  wood  sprites, 
and  exhibits  to  them  glories  that  are  too 
no 


The    Environments    of    the    Hoosier    Boy 

great  and  too  sacred  for  human  eyes  to  look 
upon."  Then  he  would  go  on  relating  some 
Greek  legend,  making  it  local  and  telling  it 
not  as  legend  but  as  fact  known  to  him.  In 
my  boyish  literalness,  I  remember,  his  words 
puzzled  me  greatly.  I  could  not  believe 
that  Edward  was  lying,  though  my  fear  that 
he  was  doing  so,  was  strengthened  by  a 
complete  and  constitutional  disbelief  in  the 
occult,  the  supernatural  and  the  mystical. 
That  incredulity  had  been  fostered  in  my 
mind  by  the  teachings  of  my  father  and  my 
mother,  who,  in  fear  that  we  should  imbibe 
superstition  from  the  ignorance  about  us, 
had  taken  pains  from  our  very  infancy  to 
guard  against  such  influences.  Ghost  stories 
had  always  been  forbidden  in  our  nursery, 
and  even  fairy  stories  were  permitted  only 
when  accompanied  by  an  explanation  of  their 
character.  80  when  Edward  localized  his 
Greek  legends  and  placed  them  in  modern 
settings  of  scene  and  circumstance,  I  was 
grievously  puzzled  by  a  conflict  between  un- 
111 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

belief  in  the  supernatural  on  the  one  hand, 
and  my  profound  faith  in  Edward's  truthful 
ness  on  the  other.  After  several  repetitions 
of  this  experience,  I  made  up  my  mind  that 
in  telling  these  stories  Edward  was  lying, 
and  I  was  mightily  troubled  by  a  fear  that 
he  would  be  damned  for  doing  so. 

In  later  years  Edward  was  fond  of  re 
lating  an  experience  of  his  own  and  mine 
encountered  at  this  time — an  experience 
which  gave  us  our  first  lesson  in  commercial 
morality  as  it  is  sometimes  practiced. 

Among  other  things  that  we  did  at  that 
period,  was  the  manufacture  of  mussel-shell 
lime.  We  hit  upon  this  by  accident,  and  at 
first  sought  only  a  domestic  use  for  our  pro 
duct.  It  was  a  nearly  impalpable  powder, 
and  we  found  it  to  be  a  superior  metal 
polish. 

One   day  Edward  was   seized  with   the 

thought  that  we  might  make  a  little  pocket 

money— a   rare   thing   with   us — out   of  our 

discovery  by  putting  it  on  the  market.     To 

112 


The    Environments    of    the    Hoosier    Boy 

that  end  he  consulted  a  certain  peripatetic 
scissors-grinder  who  was  accustomed  to  pass 
our  way  once  or  twice  a  wreek.  He  showed 
him  experimentally  how,  by  a  little  rubbing 
with  our  shell  lime,  a  knife  or  pair  of  scissors 
could  be  made  to  "look  like  new,"  and 
asked  for  the  scissors-grinder's  advice  as 
to  means  by  which  to  market  our  product. 
Edward  was  shrewd  enough  to  withhold 
from  the  man  all  information  as  to  our  pro 
cesses  of  manufacture,  but  at  that  point  un 
happily  his  sagacity  ceased. 

The  scissors-grinder  eagerly  offered  to 
become  our  agent. 

"You  boys  furnish  me  the  stuff,"  he 
said,  "  and  I'll  sell  it.  I  can  put  it  into  every 
house  in  town.  But  what  shall  we  call  it? 
We  must  have  a  good  name  for  it.  That 
means  a  lot." 

So  Edward  began  cudgeling  his  brains 

for  a  name.     Finally,  as  he  looked  across  the 

street,  his  eye  caught  sight  of  some  Venetian 

window  blinds,  which  had  been  newly  painted 

113 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

of  an  intenser  and  grassier  green  than  was 
usual,  and  he  suggested  that  we  should  call 
our  powder  "Venetian  Polish."  To  this 
suggestion  the  scissors-grinder  added  an 
other.  u  A  thing  ought  to  be  called  French," 
he  said,  "  if  you're  going  to  sell  it.  Let's  call 
it  'French  Venetian  Polish.'" 

Edward's  conscience  was  not  geographi 
cal  in  its  tendencies,  and  so  the  suggestion 
was  accepted.  He  and  I  made  a  consider 
able  quantity  of  the  "French  Venetian 
Polish,"  packed  it  in  pasteboard  boxes  of 
our  own  manufacture,  and  delivered  it  to  the 
scissors-grinder  for  sale  on  commission.  He 
sold  it  readily  enough  on  its  merits,  but  he 
not  only  pocketed  the  total  proceeds  of  the 
sales,  but  managed  to  discover  what  the 
"French  Venetian  Polish"  was  made  of  and 
how  it  was  made.  After  that  he  made  it  for 
himself,  and  the  only  good  thing  we  two 
boys  got  out  of  our  discovery  was  experi 
ence. 

After    six    months    or    so   of    our  resi- 

114 


The    Environments    of    the    Hoosier    Boy 

dence  in  New  Albany,  Mr.  Terrell's  pastorate 
came  to  the  end  appointed  for  it  under  the 
itinerant  system,  and  he  was  transferred  to 
the  charge  of  Wesley  Chapel,  in  Madison, 
to  which  city  the  family  removed. 

As  illustrative  of  the  life  and  thought 
of  that  time,  I  may  explain  that  an  assign 
ment  to  the  pastorate  of  Wesley  Chapel 
was  a  matter  of  some  perplexity  to  the  eccle 
siastical  authorities.  Wesley  Chapel  was  the 
most  fashionable  Methodist  church,  in  the 
wealthiest  and  most  fashionable  city  in  all 
Southern  Indiana.  The  church,  though  call 
ing  itself  a  chapel,  was  suspected,  if  not  of 
popish,  inclinations,  at  least  of  a  tendency 
toward  Episcopalian  formalism.  Wesley 
Chapel  had  set  up  a  choir,  not  to  monopo 
lize  the  singing,  but  to  lead  and  guide  it, 
and  the  fact  was  regarded  with  grave  doubt 
as  an  innovation  of  very  dangerous  tendency. 
Although  the  appointment  to  the  pastorate 
of  Wesley  Chapel  was  justly  regarded  as 
financially,  socially  and  in  other  ways  the 
115 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

very  best  within  the  gift  of  the  bishop  who 
presided  over  that  Conference,  there  were 
not  many  ministers  willing  to  accept  it,  and 
still  fewer  to  whom  the  bishop  was  willing 
to  entrust  it.  As  the  congregation  was  com 
posed  of  some  of  the  best  educated  people 
in  the  little  city,  the  clergyman  assigned  to 
its  pastorate  must  be  a  man  of  ability  and 
intellectual  attainments.  As  the  church  in 
sisted  upon  maintaining  a  choir,  and  was 
suspected  of  a  strong  though  still  dormant 
longing  for  an  organ,  there  were  many  of 
the  ministers  who  felt  conscientious  scruples 
of  a  very  grave  nature  about  accepting  a 
pastorate  which  might  seem  at  least  to  com 
mit  them  to  tolerance,  if  not  to  approval  of 
such  ritualistic  departures  from  the  sim 
plicity  of  Methodist  doctrine  and  practice. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  were  some  minis 
ters  in  the  Conference  who  would  have  been 
pleased  to  be  assigned  to  Wesley  Chapel,  in 
order  that  they  might  use  all  they  had  of 
ecclesiastical  authority  and  pastoral  influence 

116 


The    Environments    of    the    Hoosier    Boy 

for  the  suppression  of  the  choir  and  the 
restoration  of  Methodist  simplicity  within 
that  erring  church.  These  wanted  to  "make 
a  row,"  and  the  wise  bishops  did  not  want  a 


"row." 


In  our  more  enlightened  time  it  is  diffi 
cult  to  understand  the  intellectual  attitude 
of  half  a  century  ago,  upon  matters  of  this 
kind.  But  no  history  of  that  time  would  be 
even  approximately  complete  if  it  did  not 
include  some  attempt,  at  least,  to  illustrate 
this  point. 

Roman  Catholics  were  at  that  time  both 
feared  and  hated.  They  were  accounted 
idolaters  and  worshipers  of  graven  images, 
and  whatever  in  the  remotest  degree  savored 
of  Roman  Catholic  practice  was  looked  upon 
as  a  thing  of  devilish  inspiration.  I  remem 
ber  that  I  once  suffered  a  period  of  enforced 
and  rather  severe  penance  for  the  grave 
offence  of  having  strayed  into  a  Catholic 
church  one  week-day  afternoon,  to  hear  the 
vesper  music.  And  I  remember  hearing  one 
117 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

dear  old  lady  publicly  censured  for  having 
expressed  the  belief  that  some,  at  least,  of 
the  Roman  Catholics  might  be  admitted  to 
heaven.  The  preacher  who  censured  her— a 
Baptist,  I  think  he  was — explained  the  matter 
very  logically,  and  with  all  the  narrowness 
and  intolerance  that  logic  chopping  usually 
breeds  in  half-instructed  minds.  He  began 
by  saying  that  idolatry  was,  of  course,  a  sin 
quite  unpardonable  of  God,  if  not  renounced 
and  repented  of;  that  Roman  Catholics  were 
clearly  idolators ;  that  they  must  therefore, 
of  necessity,  be  damned  unless  they  repented 
and  became  Protestants;  and  that  in  express 
ing  the  hope  that  some  of  them  might  be 
saved  through  the  tender  mercies  of  God, 
the  gentle-spirited  old  lady  had  been  dis 
loyal  to  the  very  fundamentals  of  faith,  and 
had  lent  her  countenance  to  the  heathen  prac 
tice  of  worshiping  idols. 

There  was  one  Episcopal  church  in  Madi 
son.      The    other    Protestant    churches    re 
garded  it  as  merely  a  slightly  modified  form 
118 


The    Environments    of    the    Hoosier    Boy 

of  the  Roman  Catholic  communion.  It  had 
stained  glass  windows.  It  had  an  allegorical 
painting  on  the  window  over  the  altar.  It 
had  a  pipe  organ.  Its  rector  read  the  service 
in  a  white  gown  and  preached  in  a  black 
one.  Worse  than  all,  that  church  had  a 
gilded  cross  surmounting  its  steeple.  Was 
not  the  cross  a  sign  and  symbol  of  Roman 
Catholicism?  Was  it  not,  in  fact,  one  of 
the  "graven  images"  which  Roman  Catholic 
idolaters  wickedly  worshiped?  Were  not 
Methodist  girls,  and  girls  of  Baptist  and 
Presbyterian  families  strictly  forbidden  to 
use  the  cross  as  an  ornament  when  they  manu 
factured  for  themselves  out  of  crushed  rose 
petals,  a  chain  of  beads? 

I  suppose  that  at  that  time  there  was 
not  in  all  the  land,  and  I  am  certain  there 
was  not  in  Southern  Indiana,  a  single  Meth 
odist  church  which  would  have  permitted 
the  playing  of  any  musical  instrument  at  its 
services,  or  the  use  of  the  cross  in  the 
church,  or  on  the  person  of  any  of  its  con- 

119 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

gregation.  That  which  is  properly  the  uni 
versal  symbol  of  Christianity,  and  is  now 
everywhere  recognized  as  such,  was  then 
held  to  be  a  Roman  Catholic  device  for  the 
betrayal  of  human  souls  into  the  devil's  pos 
session. 

And  the  narrowness  of  mind  which 
prompted  such  views,  and  which  excluded 
everything  of  ornament  from  the  architec 
ture  and  the  furnishing  of  churches,  and 
every  ministry  of  taste  and  beauty  from  their 
services,  went  much  further  than  this  in  its 
pestilent  and  nagging  interference.  I  remem 
ber  with  what  bitterness  the  clergyman  under 
whose  ministrations  we  sat  in  our  early  boy 
hood,  denounced  the  "  putting  on  of  gold 
and  costly  apparel,"  even  exhorting  wives 
and  widows  to  strip  off  their  wedding  rings, 
as  "shackles  that  would  bind  them  to  the 
devil,"  to  quote  the  phrase  I  remember  hear 
ing  that  fervent  preacher  use  in  a  burst  of 
excited  eloquence  on  this  theme.  I  remem 
ber,  too,  with  what  destructive  oratorical 

120 


The    Environments    of    the    Hoosier    Boy 

onslaughts  the  preachers  used  to  denounce 
the  sinful  wearing  of  "artificials" — by  which 
they  meant  artificial  flowers — in  women's 
bonnets.  In  one  case  a  middle-aged  and 
most  sedate  widow,  who  was  growing  thin 
of  visage  under  the  burden  of  caring  for  a 
family  on  an  all  too  meagre  income,  was 
rather  cruelly  called  to  account  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  congregation  for  having  filled 
out  the  hollow  sides  of  her  poke  bonnet 
with  a  little  white  and  black  niching.  She 
had  done  so,  she  explained,  merely  to  hide 
the  increasing  hollowness  of  her  cheeks,  and 
to  that  plea  the  preacher  replied  that  in  try 
ing  to  do  that  she  had  been  guilty  of  the  sin 
of  wilful  deception. 

In  Madison,  and  in  other  places  at  the 
time  of  our  removal  to  Madison,  the  rigid 
puritanism  that  we  had  known  before  had 
been  somewhat  softened  by  increasing  cul 
ture,  but  in  many  ways  it  still  reigned  and 
ruled  with  the  strong  hand.  Sabbatarianism 
especially  was  rampant  and  very  exigent  in 

121 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 


its  demands,  particularly  among  the  Metho 
dists.  It  was  held  to  be  sinful  to  take  a 
bath  on  Sunday,  or  to  shave,  or  to  brush 
one's  shoes  on  that  day.  To  buy  or  sell  the 
very  simplest  thing  on  Sunday  was  rigor 
ously  forbidden.  No  cooking  of  any  kind 
was  permitted — all  that  must  be  done  on 
Saturday — and  cold  meals  alone  were  per 
mitted  on  what  we  were  taught  to  regard  as 
the  Sabbath. 

As  a  healthy  and  very  active  boy  I  fell 
into  the  habit,  during  one  glorious  June  in 
Vevay,  of  walking  out  into  "  God's  first  tem 
ples,"  the  woodlands,  during  the  scant  inter 
vals  between  religious  services.  At  this  the 
"  preacher  in  charge  "  was  gravely  disturbed. 
He  made  it  the  occasion  of  a  pastoral  visit 
to  my  mother,  at  that  time  a  widow,  trying 
to  bring  up  her  children  in  the  u  nurture  and 
admonition  of  the  Lord."  After  that  I  was 
forbidden  to  indulge  my  sinful  love  of  nature 
and  compelled  to  pass  my  Sunday  afternoons 
in  pretending  to  read  "Smiley  on  Class 
122 


The    Environments    of    the    Hoosier    Boy 

Meetings,"  "Baxter's  Saints'  Rest,"  and 
somebody's  "  Plan  of  Salvation."  I  say 
"pretending  to  read"  these  books,  for  my 
sense  of  justice  was  deeply  wounded  by  the 
requirement,  and  finding  myself  helpless  to 
resist  it  in  any  other  way,  I  deliberately 
cheated  it.  Thus  I  \vas  saved  from  the  sin 
of  breathing  the  Sunday  air  in  the  glorious 
forest,  and  induced  to  practice  a  pious  de 
ception  instead. 

My  helpless  little  soul  was  often  thus  in 
blind  revolt  against  teachings  that  I  could 
neither  understand  nor  reconcile  with  the 
little  I  possessed  of  reason.  Thus,  when  the 
Vevay  boys  went  in  swimming  on  Sunday 
and  one  of  them  was  drowned,  it  was  ex 
plained  by  our  preacher  that  the  poor  fel 
low's  death — undoubtedly  followed  by  his 
damnation — was  decreed  by  the  Almighty 
as  a  just  punishment  of  his  sin.  This  decla 
ration  sorely  puzzled  my  mind.  I  asked  my 
self  why — if  going  in  swimming  on  Sunday 
was  a  sin  deserving  death — the  other  boys 

123 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

in  the  party  were  not  punished  in  like 
manner.  Carrying  this  thought  a  little 
further,  I  argued  that,  if  the  results  were  to 
be  taken  as  an  indication  of  the  Divine  view 
of  the  matter,  the  weight  of  the  evidence 
was  overwhelmingly  in  favor  of  swimming 
on  Sunday;  for  only  one  of  the  ten  boys 
had  been  drowned,  while  the  other  nine  had 
received  proof  of  God's  approval  by  being 
permitted  to  enjoy  their  bath  without  any 
punishment  or  any  ill  consequences  what 
ever.  Thus,  it  seemed  to  me,  the  Divine 
verdict  was  nine  to  one  in  favor  of  the  inno 
cence  of  Sunday  bathing  in  the  river.  I 
firmly  believed,  of  course,  in  the  direct 
supervision  of  human  affairs  by  Providence, 
and  so  I  could  not  doubt  that  this  poor  fel 
low's  drowning  was  decreed  as  a  punish 
ment  for  something,  but  in  view  of  the 
escape  of  the  other  nine  boys,  I  could  not 
think  that  he  was  thus  terribly  and  irretriev 
ably  punished  for  an  offence  which  brought 
no  punishment  at  all  to  his  comrades.  He 

124 


The    Environments    of    the    Hoosier    Boy 

must  have  committed  some  other  sin,  I 
argued. 

Puzzled  to  the  point  of  bewilderment,  I 
dared  not  suggest  my  doubts  to  any  grown 
person.  I  knew  that  such  a  course  would 
bring  to  me  not  enlightenment  or  explana 
tion,  but  a  terrible  rebuke,  with  some  species 
of  penance  added  for  the  purification  of  my 
soul.  So  I  spoke  only  to  Edward  on  the 
subject.  He  was  about  eleven  or  twelve 
years  old  at  the  time,  but  my  faith  in  his 
wisdom  was  boundless.  No  counsel — not 
even  that  of  the  preacher — could  have  meant 
so  much  to  me  as  his  words  always  did. 

I  laid  the  case  before  him,  therefore,  to 
his  profound  grief  and  sorrow.  He  had 
accepted  as  indisputable  every  line  and  word 
of  our  religious  teaching,  and  his  conscience 
was  a  relentless  tyrant,  governing  his  soul 
and  controlling  his  conduct  in  every  par 
ticular.  It  did  so,  indeed,  to  the  very  end 
of  his  life,  but  enlarged  knowledge  and  a 
sounder  thinking,  as  he  grew  older,  wrought 
125 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

in  him  an  enlightenment  of  mind  which  set 
him  free  from  the  bondage  of  narrow  dog 
matism  to  which  as  a  boy  he  submitted  him 
self,  in  full  confidence  that  all  the  things  he 
had  been  taught  were  direct  revelations  of 
God's  will  and  purposes. 

I  wish  to  make  this  point  clear.  In  all 
his  life,  I  think,  Edward  Eggleston  never 
permitted  himself  to  do  any  act  that  his 
conscience  forbade,  or  to  leave  undone  any 
duty  that  his  conscience  enjoined.  But  while 
in  childhood  the  dogmas  in  which  he  had 
been  trained  gave  law  to  his  thought,  his 
intellect,  as  he  grew  older,  asserted  its  right 
to  question  the  authority  of  those  dogmas, 
and  he  did  so  with  utter  fearlessness,  and 
with  the  same  conscientious  courage  that  had 
in  childhood  led  him  to  obey  at  whatever 
cost. 

I  do  not  remember  many  things  so  well 

as  I  remember  the  way  in  which  he  dealt  with 

my  doubts  and  questionings  on  this  occasion. 

Adopting  the  views  at  that  time  taught  us 

126 


The    Environments    of    the   Hoosier    Boy 

from  the  pulpit,  he  suggested  that  my  doubts 
were  directly  inspired  by  the  devil  for  the 
destruction  of  my  soul,  and  perhaps  also  of 
his,  for  my  presentation  of  the  matter,  he 
frankly  confessed,  had  awakened  the  spirit 
of  doubt  in  his  own  mind.  He  could  not 
resolve  the  matter,  but  our  best  course,  he 
suggested,  would  be  to  pray  that  we  might 
not  be  led  into  temptation,  and  then  put  the 
matter  out  of  our  minds.  The  insight,  the 
critical  acumen,  and  the  enlightenment  which 
guided  his  thought  so  wisely  in  after  life, 
had  not  yet  come  to  the  boy  of  a  dozen 
years  old. 

If  details  of  this  character  seem  trivial 
to  any  reader,  my  answer  is  that  they  are 
necessary  to  the  just  fulfilment  of  the  two 
purposes  with  which  this  work  is  written. 
Those  purposes  are  first  to  trace  the  develop 
ment  of  Edward  Eggleston's  mind,  and 
second  to  present  the  completest  picture  I 
can  of  the  life,  the  ideas  and  the  tendencies 
of  the  time  in  which  he  was  born  and  reared, 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

as  a  part  of  that  "culture  history,"  that  his 
tory  of  life  in  the  United  States  which  he 
made  the  theme  of  all  his  literary  work,  the 
object  of  all  his  studies. 


128 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Madison  and  New  Conditions. 

T  the  time  of  our  removal  to  Madi 
son  that  town  was  in  many  respects 
the  most  important  city  in  Indiana. 
It  was   distinctly  the  wealthiest  of 
all  of  them,  and  the  busiest. 

A  little  while  earlier  Madison  had  been 
indisputably  the  largest  of  Indiana  cities. 
It  still  disputed  with  Indianapolis  and  New 
Albany  the  supremacy  in  population,  a  claim 
the  census  of  1850  negatived,  while  in  point  of 
business — though  signs  of  decline  and  decay 
were  beginning  to  appear — Madison  still 
held  an  undisputed  lead.  The  census  of 
1850  showed  the  population  of  the  little  city 
to  be  8012.  A  foot-note  to  the  census  report 
places  it  at  12,000  in  1852,  though  upon 
what  authority  does  not  appear.  At  that 
time  its  people  " claimed"  a  population  of 
129 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

20,000  or  more.  Then,  as  now,  ambitious 
cities  had  the  faculty  of  growing  with  extra 
ordinary  rapidity  during  the  years  when  there 
was  no  census  taking  to  correct  the  figures 
of  the  "claims." 

Madison  lies  on  the  Ohio  river,  about 
ninety  miles  below  Cincinnati,  and  about 
forty  miles  above  Louisville.  In  those  days 
the  river  was  the  one  great  highway,  both  of 
travel  and  of  commerce.  It  was  the  endeavor 
of  both  to  reach  the  river  in  the  shortest, 
speediest  and  least  expensive  way  possible. 
The  enterprise  of  the  early  investors  in 
Madison  had  wisely  availed  itself  of  this 
fact.  They  had  secured  the  building  of  one 
of  the  earliest  railroads  in  the  State — the 
very  earliest  I  think — from  Madison  to  In 
dianapolis.  With  this  artery  of  commerce 
leading  into  the  interior,  Madison  quickly 
became  the  most  important  commercial  city 
in  the  State.  All  the  merchants  in  all  the 
little  towns  in  the  interior  purchased  their 
goods,  of  every  kind,  from  the  wholesale 
Itt 


THE   RAH 


Madison     and     New     Conditions 

houses  in  Madison.  All  the  produce  of  all 
the  farms  was  sent  to  Madison,  to  be  for 
warded  thence  by  river  to  distant  markets, 
and  all  the  travel  followed  the  same  route. 
In  addition  to  the  daily,  and  at  times  twice 
daily,  steamboats  of  the  Louisville  and  Cin 
cinnati  Mail  Line,  Madison  had  daily  packet 
lines  of  her  own,  some  to  Cincinnati  and 
some  to  Louisville.  There  were  frequent 
steamboats,  stopping  there,  too,  on  their 
way  from  Cincinnati  to  New  Orleans  or  St. 
Louis.  Still  again,  there  were  multitudi 
nous  flatboats,  taking  cargoes  at  the  busy 
little  city  for  cheap  transportation  to  New 
Orleans.  The  "levee"  was  a  busy  place, 
and  the  street  fronting  it  was  solidly  built 
up  with  forwarding  and  commission  houses, 
grain,  flour  and  feed  stores,  establishments 
for  the  sale  of  provisions  and  boat  stores, 
and  other  things  of  like  kind.  Streets  farther 
from  the  river  front  were  filled  with  whole 
sale  houses. 

Very  naturally,  the  seat  of  so  thriving  a 
131 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

commerce  became  a  centre  of  manufactur 
ing  industry  also.  There  were  several  con 
siderable  foundries  and  machine  shops  there  ; 
an  extensive  shipyard ;  two  great  breweries ; 
several  flour  mills  of  large  capacity  ;  many 
cooper-shops,  planing  mills,  starch  factories, 
lath  works  and  a  score  or  more  of  shops  for 
minor  manufacturing. 

Greatest  of  all  the  town's  industries  in 
importance  was  pork  packing.  During  the 
Crimean  war  Madison  was  indeed  the  most 
important  seat  of  the  pork  packing  industry 
in  all  the  world. 

As  wealth  abounded  in  the  town,  luxury 
was  there  also.  Residences  were  built,  some 
of  which  would  be  accounted  fine  even  in 
our  large  cities  of  to-day,  and  life  there  took 
on  aspects  of  ease  and  serenity  which  strongly 
impressed  the  minds  of  us  two  Hoosier 
boys,  who  had  seen  nothing  of  the  kind  be 
fore.  The  city  was  beautiful,  with  its  broad, 
well  shaded  and  smoothly  graveled  streets, 
and  with  well  ornamented  grounds  surround- 
132 


Madison     and     New     Conditions 

ing  all  the  best  houses.  In  brief,  I  may  say 
truly  that  Madison,  with  its  population  of 
eight  or  ten  thousand  souls,  wore  the  aspect 
of  a  real  city,  as  no  other  town  north  of  the 
Ohio  and  west  of  Cincinnati  could  then  pre 
tend  to  do.  It  alone  looked  like  a  city 
assuredly  prosperous,  and  nowhere  shabby 
with  any  appearance  of  raw  newness.  It 
alone  of  all  the  towns  in  Indiana  had  great 
banking  houses  of  its  own  to  support  its 
commerce  and  its  industries.  Notable  among 
these  banking  houses  at  that  time  was  that 
of  Winslow,  Lanier  &  Co.,  which,  when  the 
trade  of  Madison  fell  into  decay,  removed 
to  New  York  and  became  a  recognized 
financial  power  in  the  metropolis. 

As  has  been  said  already,  Madison  was 
just  beginning  to  decline  in  trade  and  impor 
tance  at  the  time  of  our  removal  to  the  city, 
and  the  decay  proceeded  rapidly  during  our 
stay  there  and  afterwards.  Other  railroads 
were  building  from  Indianapolis  to  Cincin 
nati  and  Louisville,  while  still  others  were 

133 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

stretching  their  lines  toward  St.  Louis, 
Chicago,  and  from  Indianapolis  eastwardly 
to  connect  with  railroads  leading  to  New 
York,  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore. 

All  these  lines  tended  to  rob  Madison 
of  its  business.  They  diverted  its  trade  to 
other  and  greater  centres.  They  deprived 
the  little  city  of  the  one  advantage  it  had 
possessed.  They  took  away  its  one  reason 
for  being,  as  a  commercial  and  industrial 
town. 

The  decay  was  rapid.  The  imposing 
row  of  commission  houses  and  their  kind 
that  fronted  the  river,  were  closed  in  a  suc 
cession  so  rapid  as  to  be  almost  startling. 
The  wholesale  houses  farther  from  the  river, 
which  had  enjoyed  a  great  trade  in  dry 
goods,  groceries,  hardware,  iron  and  nails, 
crockery,  cordage  and  other  staples  of  com 
merce,  presently  followed  the  example  thus 
set.  Within  a  year  after  we  boys  first  knew 
the  town,  scarcely  one  of  these  establishments 
remained  actively  open.  The  few  that  still 

134 


Madison     and     New     Conditions 

maintained  a  pretence  of  being  in  business 
did  so  chiefly  because  their  owners  had  made 
comfortable  fortunes,  liked  Madison  as  a 
place  of  residence,  and  enjoyed  having  in 
their  stores  and  offices  pleasant  places  in 
which  to  pass  the  daylight  hours  in  converse 
with  their  friends. 

But  if  Madison  thus  ceased  to  be  a 
thriving  seat  of  commerce  and  industry,  ft 
continued  to  be  the  chief  centre  of  the  cul 
ture,  the  intellectual  activity,  and  the  social 
refinement  of  Southern  Indiana.  I  have 
before  me  as  I  write  a  long  list,  which  I  for 
bear  to  copy,  of  men  who  made  Madison  or 
its  near  neighborhood  their  home  at  that 
time,  and  who  were  conspicuously  distin 
guished  in  State  and  nation  for  their  abili 
ties,  their  culture  and  their  intellectual 
achievements. 

Add  to  all  these  things  the  fact  that  the 

little  city  is   surrounded   by  scenery  of  rare 

beauty   and    interest,    and    that   it   lies   in  a 

region  richer,  I   think,  than  any  other  in  all 

135 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

that  part  of  the  country,  in  geological  forma 
tions  of  a  kind  likely  to  awaken  the  interest 
and  enthusiasm  of  an  eager  boy,  and  the 
reader  will  understand  how  great  a  part  his 
new  surroundings  played  in  the  development 
of  Edward  Eggleston's  mind  and  character. 

Another  advantage  which  our  removal 
to  Madison  brought  to  Edward  was  a  closer 
contact  than  he  had  ever  before  enjoyed  with 
a  man  whose  high  character  and  richly 
dowered  intellect  made  association  with  him 
a  circumstance  of  the  utmost  consequence  to 
such  a  boy  as  Edward  was. 

For  what  has  need  to  be  said  concerning 
that  gifted  man  and  his  influence,  another 
chapter  must  be  opened.  Meanwhile  I  com 
plete  this  one  by  saying  that  the  only  school 
Edward  attended  during  our  stay  in  Madi 
son,  was  one  in  which  education  was  con 
ducted  upon  the  old  and  very  brutal  "  knock 
down  and  drag  out"  system. 

There  were  two  boys'  schools  of  that 
kind  in  the  town,  each  presided  over  by  a 
136 


Madison     and     New     Conditions 

man  of  adequate  scholarship,  but  of  almost 
demoniacal  ferocity  in  discipline.  As  there 
was  no  other  school  in  the  town  sufficiently 
advanced  in  its  curriculum,  Edward  and  I 
were  sent  to  one  of  these. 

Neither  of  us  was  ever  made  the  victim 
of  the  brutality  which  dominated  the  school. 
I  rejoice  in  that  fact  now,  because  I  firmly 
intended  then,  and  I  am  sure  I  should  have 
carried  out  my  purpose,  to  kill  the  teacher 
if  he  should  ever  horsewhip  either  Edward 
or  myself  in  the  bloodthirsty  way  in  which 
he  daily  flogged  other  boys.  It  is  a  comfort 
to  me  that  I  escaped  the  deliberately  antici 
pated  necessity  of  committing  homicide. 

After  the  usual  month  or  two  of  attend 
ance  upon  this  school,  Edward  fell  ill  again 
— made  so,  as  he  assured  me  in  later  years, 
chiefly  by  the  nervous  distress  he  suffered 
from  the  daily  and  hourly  sight  of  the  brutal 
ities  inflicted  upon  his  schoolmates. 

Long  years  afterward — after  he  had 
made  his  own  name  famous — Edward  visited 
137 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

Madison,  and  while  there  declined  the  most 
important  reception  tendered  to  him,  solely 
because  he  had  learned  that  the  teacher  of  that 
school  "  the  keeper  of  that  shambles"  Ed 
ward  called  him,  was  still  living  and  was  to 
be  one  of  the  guests  upon  the  occasion. 

"I  simply  couldn't  face  that  man,  Geor- 
die,"  he  said  to  me  when  telling  me  of  the 
matter.  "  The  very  thought  of  him  filled 
me  with  the  old-time  terror." 

Fortunately  there  presently  came  to 
Madison  a  system  of  graded  schools,  which 
at  once  made  an  end  of  the  two  "  English  and 
classical  academies  "  that  had  so  long  sur 
vived  as  evil  relics  of  the  savage  age  in 
pedagogy. 

The  graded  school  system  was  fortu 
nately  organized  and  presided  over  by  an 
educator  of  rare  wisdom  and  humane  mind, 
a  Mr.  Barnes.  I  know  not  whether  he  still 
lives  or  not,  but  to  him,  or  to  his  memory  as 
the  case  may  be,  I  rejoice  to  pay  a  tribute  of 
deserved  gratitude. 

138 


Madison     and     New     Conditions 

Edward  did  not  at  any  time  attend  the 
graded  schools  in  Madison.  His  health  did 
not  permit  that,  but  after  his  customary 
fashion  he  diligently  prosecuted  his  studies 
on  his  own  account  and  made  more  rapid 
progress  than  he  would  have  made  had  he 
been  one  of  a  class  in  school. 


139 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

Two    Great    Educators. 


HE  man  referred  to  in  the  preced 
ing  chapter  as  exercising    a  pecu 
liarly    wholesome     influence    upon 
Edward     Eggleston's     mind     and 
character  at  this  period  of  his  boyhood,  was 
Guilford  Dudley  Eggleston. 

I  have  never  known  a  man  who  more 
perfectly  satisfied  the  highest  ideals  I  can 
form  of  manhood  in  its  perfection  than  this 
somewhat  distant  kinsman  of  ours  did.  He 
was  the  son  of  our  father's  first  cousin, 
Judge  Myles  Gary  Eggleston,  who  was  in 
his  time  one  of  the  most  learned  and  most 
distinguished  jurists  in  all  the  region  west 
of  the  Alleghenies.  Our  cousin  Guilford 
had  been  educated  in  the  best  schools  and 
colleges  of  his  time,  and,  being  a  man  of 
sufficient  means,  he  had  employed  his  abun- 
J40 


Two      Great       Educators 

dant  leisure  in  adding  to  his  scholarship  all 
that  wisely  directed  reading,  conscientiously 
liberal  thinking,  and  more  of  travel  and 
contact  with  intellectual  men  than  was  com 
mon  at  that  time,  could  bring  to  a  man  of 
superior  intellectual  and  moral  character. 

Better  still,  he  was  a  man  of  unusual 
spiritual  qualities  that  fascinated  all  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact  and  made  him  one 
of  the  best  beloved  of  men.  Sunny  in 
temper,  inimitably  kindly  and  affectionate, 
abounding  in  healthful  animal  spirits,  full  of 
a  humor  that  seemed  to  caress  while  it 
amused,  he  was  an  optimist  who  brought 
about  the  good  that  he  so  confidently  hoped 
for. 

From  our  earliest  childhood  this  kins 
man  of  ours  had  been  Edward's  ideal  man 
and  mine.  His  comings  to  our  home  were  to 
us  the  gladdest  of  all  happenings.  From 
the  moment  of  his  coming  to  the  hour  of  his 
departure  we  were  in  an  ecstatic  state  of 
limitless  joy.  He  made  himself  our  com- 
141 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

panion,  our  ceaseless  entertainer,  and,  with 
out  our  knowing  the  fact,  our  wisest  teacher. 

Our  return  to  Madison  brought  Edward 
directly  and  constantly  under  this  man's 
influence  and  guidance.  Edward  was  only 
about  fourteen  years  old  at  the  time,  but  his 
intellectual  activity  was  already  remarkable. 
Apart  from  his  studies,  he  was  reading  vora 
ciously  in  departments  of  literature  and  his 
tory  which  usually  offer  no  attraction  to 
boys  of  that  age.  When  Col.  Michael  C. 
Garber,  editor  of  the  Madison  Courier, 
offered  a  prize  for  the  best  essay  that  might 
be  submitted  to  him  for  publication,  Edward 
easily  secured  the  award  and  immediately 
set  himself  down  to  read  and  love  the  poems 
of  William  Cullen  Bryant,  a  good  edition 
of  which  constituted  the  prize  he  had  won. 

He  had  already  become  enamored  of 
Longfellow,  but  Pope  had  been,  until  that 
time,  his  favorite  poet,  perhaps  because,  in 
the  "  Essay  on  Man,"  the  little  poem  on  Soli 
tude  and  some  others,  Pope  strongly  ap- 

142 


Two      Great       Educators 

pealed  to  the  philosophical  side  of  the  medi 
tative  boy's  nature. 

He  was  fond  of  reading  Burke,  too,  and 
Addison  and  Steele.  He  even  read  the 
elder  Mill  and  Bentham,  and  much  else  of 
like  character. 

But  his  reading  was  self-directed,  and 
not  always  wisely  so.  His  habit  of  believing 
"that  which  is  written"  sometimes  misled 
him  through  the  influence  of  unsound  writers 
and  untrustworthy  thinkers. 

Our  kinsman  interested  himself  to  cor 
rect  this,  and  to  guide  both  the  studies  and 
the  intellectual  exercises  of  the  boy  into 
profitable  channels.  He  chose  Edward's 
books  for  him,  lending  many  from  his  own 
well-equipped  library,  some  of  them  books 
to  which  otherwise  the  boy  would  not  have 
had  access. 

Better  still,   this  wise   and  most  gentle 

mentor  taught  Edward   how  to  think.     He 

was    at   pains   to   correct   the   habit   of    too 

ready  acceptance,  to  awaken  in  his  pupil  that 

143 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

intellectual  independence  without  which  read 
ing  is  apt  to  be  worse  than  profitless.  He 
taught  the  boy  to  doubt,  to  question,  to 
compare,  to  investigate,  and  to  reason.  He 
"breathed  into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of 
life." 

And  while  thus  educating  the  boy's 
mind,  he  was  at  equal  pains  to  train  his 
character.  He  laughed  him  out  of  a  certain 
unwholesome  asceticism  which  the  ignorant 
dogmatism  of  a  narrow  religious  teaching 
had  bred  in  him.  In  a  word,  the  wholesome 
influence  of  this  man  did  more  than  all  else 
at  that  time  to  bring  moral  and  intellectual 
health  to  the  boy,  to  enliven  his  life  and 
strengthen  all  that  was  best  in  his  nature, 
while  repressing  and  correcting  every  ten 
dency  to  morbidity  of  mind  or  spirit. 

Speaking  of  this  period  of  his  boyhood 
in  later  life,  Edward  once  said: 

"  I  didn't  suspect  that  Guilford  was  try 
ing  to  teach  me  or  even  to  influence  me.  I 
never  found  that  out  until  after  I  became  a 

144 


Two      Great      Educators 

man  of  middle  age.  At  the  time  I  thought 
he  was  merely  trying,  in  his  genial  fashion,  to 
make  himself  entertaining." 

Edward  was  destined  soon  to  be  sepa 
rated  for  a  time  from  this  close  companion 
ship  with  a  mind  and  character  so  rare,  but 
the  separation  brought  him  under  another 
influence  of  like  kind  which  was  not  less 
profitable  to  him. 

After  two  years  in  Madison  Mr.  Terrell 
accepted  an  appointment  under  the  Ameri 
can  Bible  Society,  which  required  him  to 
travel  almost  continually.  Presently,  there 
fore,  the  family  was  removed  again  to  the 
old  home  in  Vevay,  and  there  Edward  and  I 
attended  the  newly  established  High  School, 
presided  over  by  Mrs.  Julia  L.  Dumont,  the 
wisest  woman  and  the  most  successful  teacher 
I  have  ever  known.  Elsewhere  in  this  vol 
ume  I  have  called  her  a  Dr.  Arnold  in  petti 
coats,  but  she  was  more  even  than  that. 
Her  gift  of  mastery  over  young  minds  was 
an  inspiration,  her  sympathy  with  youthful 

145 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

thought  and  feeling  was  a  sixth  sense.  Indeed 
her  gift  and  her  practice  of  encouraging 
pupils,  was  looked  upon  by  many  parents  at 
that  time  as  dangerous  in  tendency.  To 
those  who  had  been  trained  in  the  severities 
of  an  older  and  ruder  time,  praise  for  a  pupil 
seemed  a  perilous  throwing  down  of  the 
bars  of  discipline.  It  was  feared  also  that 
commendation  might  breed  vanity  and  self- 
conceit  of  a  kind  to  endanger  the  salvation 
of  souls. 

The  graded  school  system  was  less  suc 
cessful  in  Vevay  than  had  been  hoped,  and 
Mrs.  Dumont — who  taught  solely  because 
she  loved  the  work  and  not  at  all  because 
she  needed  to  do  so, — opened  a  little  school 
of  her  own,  sharply  limiting  it  to  ten  boys 
— "My  ten  boys"  she  called  us. 

How  she  conducted  school,  what 
methods  she  employed  and  what  results  she 
attained,  Edward  has  himself  related  in 
print,  in  a  fashion  which  I  cannot  hope  to 
improve  upon  by  any  writing  of  my  own. 
146 


Two      Great       Educators 

His  account  of  this  gifted  teacher  was 
part  of  an  article  published  in  Scribner's 
Monthly,  — now  The  Century  Magazine,  — 
for  March,  1879.  I  am  indebted  to  the 
courtesy  of  the  Century  Company,  and  of 
Dr.  Richard  Watson  Gilder,  the  editor  of 
the  magazine,  for  a  generous  permission  to 
copy  here  so  much  of  the  article  as  I  wish. 
I  copy  all  that  part  of  it  which  relates  to 
Mrs.  Dumont. 

"We  had  one  teacher  who  was,  so  far 
as  natural  genius  for  teaching  goes,  the  best 
of  all  I  have  ever  known.  Mrs.  Julia  L. 
Dumont  is,  like  all  our  Western  writers  of 
that  day,  except  Prentice,  almost  entirely 
forgotten.  But  in  the  time  before  railways, 
when  the  West,  shut  in  by  the  Alleghenies, 
had  an  incipient  literature,  Mrs.  Dumont 
occupied  no  mean  place  as  a  writer  of  poetry 
and  prose  tales.  Eminent  litterateurs  of  the 
time,  from  Philadelphia  and  Cincinnati,  used 
to  come  to  Vevay  to  see  her;  but  they  them 
selves — these  great  lights  of  ancient  Ameri- 

147 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

can  literature  away  back  in  the  forties — are 
also  forgotten.  Who  remembers  Gallagher 
and  the  rest  to-day?  Dear  brethren,  who, 
like  myself,  scratch  away  to  fill  up  magazine 
pages,  and  who,  no  doubt,  like  myself,  are 
famous  enough  to  be  asked  for  an  autograph 
or  a  'sentiment'  in  an  album  sometimes,  let 
us  not  boast  ourselves.  Why,  indeed, 
should  the  spirit  of  mortal  be  proud?  We 
also  shall  be  forgotten — the  next  generation 
of  school  girls  will  get  their  autographs 
from  a  set  of  upstarts,  who  will  smile  at  our 
stories  and  poems  as  out  of  date  puerilities. 
Some  industrious  Allibone,  making  a  ceme 
tery  of  dead  authors,  may  give  us  in  his  dic 
tionary  three  lines  apiece  as  a  sort  of  head 
stone.  Oh,  let  us  be  humble,  and  pray  that 
even  the  Allibone  that  is  to  come  do  not 
forget  us.  For  I  look  in  vain  in  Allibone 
for  some  of  the  favorite  names  in  our  West 
ern  Parnassus.  It  was  not  enough  that  the 
East  swallowed  that  incipient  literature,  it 
even  obliterated  the  memory  of  it.  *  * 
148 


Two      Great       Educators 

"  Among  those  who  have  been  so  swiftly 
forgotten  as  not  even  to  have  a  place  in  Alii- 
bone,  is  my  old  and  once  locally  famous 
teacher,  Mrs.  Dumont.  We  thought  her 
poem  on  'The  Retreat  of  the  Ten  Thous 
and  '  admirable,  but  we  were  partial  judges. 
Her  story  of  '  Boonesborough'  was  highly 
praised  by  the  great  lights  of  the  time.  But 
her  book  of  stories  is  out  of  print,*  and  her 
poems  are  forgotten,  and  so  are  the  great 
lights  who  admired  them.  I  do  not  pretend 
that  there  was  enough  in  these  w7ritings  to 
have  made  them  deserve  a  different  fate. 
Ninety-nine-hundredths  of  all  good  literary 
production  must  of  necessity  be  forgotten ; 
if  the  old  trees  endured  forever  there  would 
be  no  room  for  the  new  shoots. 

"But  as  a  schoolmistress  Mrs.  Dumont 
deserves  immortality.  She  knew  nothing  of 
systems,  but  she  went  unerringly  to  the  goal 
by  pure  force  of  native  genius.  In  all  her 
early  life  she  taught  because  she  was  poor, 
but  after  her  husband's  increasing  property 
149 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

relieved  her  from  necessity,  she  still  taught 
school  from  love  of  it.  When  she  was  past 
sixty  years  old,  a  school-room  was  built 
for  her  alongside  her  residence,  which  was 
one  of  the  best  in  the  town.  It  was  here 
that  I  first  knew  her,  after  she  had  already 
taught  two  generations  in  the  place.  The 
4  graded'  schools  had  been  newly  intro 
duced,  and  no  man  was  found  who  could, 
either  in  acquirements  or  ability,  take  prece 
dence  of  the  venerable  schoolmistress;  so 
the  High  School  was  given  to  her. 

"  I  can  see  the  wonderful  old  lady  now, 
as  she  was  then,  with  her  cape  pinned  awry, 
rocking  her  splint-bottom  chair  nervously 
while  she  talked.  Full  of  all  manner  of 
knowledge,  gifted  with  something  very  like 
eloquence  in  speech,  abounding  in  affection 
for  her  pupils  and  enthusiasm  in  teaching, 
she  moved  us  strangely.  Being  infatuated 
with  her,  we  became  fanatic  in  our  pursuit 
of  knowledge,  so  that  the  school  hours  were 
not  enough,  and  we  had  a  'lyceum'  in  the 
150 


Two      Great      Educators 

evening  for  reading  compositions  and  a  club 
for  the  study  of  history.  If  a  recitation  be 
came  very  interesting,  the  entire  school  would 
sometimes  be  drawn  into  the  discussion  of 
the  subject;  all  other  lessons  went  to  the 
wall,  books  of  reference  were  brought  out 
of  her  library,  hours  were  consumed,  and 
many  a  time  the  school  session  was  prolonged 
until  darkness  forced  us  reluctantly  to  ad 
journ. 

u  Mrs.  Dumont  was  the  ideal  of  a  teacher 
because  she  succeeded  in  forming  character. 
She  gave  her  pupils  unstinted  praise,  not  hypo 
critically,  but  because  she  lovingly  saw  the 
best  in  every  one.  We  worked  in  the  sunshine. 
A  dull  but  industrious  pupil  was  praised  for 
diligence,  a  bright  pupil  for  ability,  a  good 
one  for  general  excellence.  The  dullards 
got  more  than  their  share,  for,  knowing  how 
easily  such  an  one  is  disheartened,  Mrs. 
Dumont  went  out  of  her  way  to  praise  the 
first  show  of  success  in  a  slow  scholar. 
She  treated  no  two  alike.  She  was  full  of  all 
151 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

sorts  of  knack  and  tact,  a  person  of  infinite 
resource  for  calling  out  the  human  spirit. 
She  could  be  incredibly  severe  when  it  was 
needful,  and  no  overgrown  boy  w7hose  mean 
ness  had  once  been  analyzed  by  Mrs.  Dumont 
ever  forgot  it. 

"  I  remember  one  boy  with  whom  she 
had  taken  some  pains.  One  day  he  wrote  an 
insulting  word  about  one  of  the  girls  of  the 
school  on  the  door  of  a  deserted  house. 
Two  of  us  were  deputized  by  the  other  boys 
to  defend  the  girl  by  complaining  of  him. 
Mrs.  Dumont  took  her  seat  and  began  to 
talk  to  him  before  the  school.  The  talking 
was  all  there  was  of  it,  but  I  think  I  never 
pitied  any  human  being  more  than  I  did  that 
boy  as  she  showed  him  his  vulgarity  and  his 
meanness,  and  as,  at  last,  in  the  climax  of 
her  indignation,  she  called  him  *  a  miserable 
hawbuck.'  At  another  time,  when  she  had 
picked  a  piece  of  paper  from  the  floor  with 
a  bit  of  profanity  written  on  it,  she  talked 
about  it  until  the  whole  school  detected  the 

152 


Two      Great       Educators 

author  by  the  beads  of  perspiration  on  his 
forehead. 

"When  I  had  written  a  composition  on 
'The  Human  Mind,'  based  on  Combe's 
'  Phrenology,'  and  adorned  with  quotations 
from  Pope's  '  Essay  on  Man,'  she  gave  me  to 
read  an  old  '  Encyclopedia  Britannica,'  con 
taining  an  article  expounding  the  Hartleian 
system  of  mental  philosophy,  and  followed 
this  with  Locke  on  the  '  Conduct  of  the 
Understanding.'  She  was  the  only  teacher  I 
have  known  who  understood  that  school 
studies  were  entirely  secondary  to  general 
reading  as  a  source  of  culture,  and  who  put 
the  habit  of  good  reading  first  in  the  list  of 
acquirements. 

"  There  was  a  rack  for  hats  and  cloaks 
so  arranged  as  to  cut  off  a  portion  of  the 
school  from  the  teacher's  sight.  Some  of 
the  larger  girls  who  occupied  this  space  took 
advantage  of  their  concealed  position  to  do 
a  great  deal  of  talking  and  tittering,  which 
did  not  escape  Mrs.  Dumont's  watchfulness. 
153 


The      Fi.'sc     oi    The     Hoosiers 

But  in  the  extreme  corner  of  the  room  was 

the  seat  of  Drusilla  H ,  who  had  never 

violated  a  rule  of  the  school.  To  reprimand 
the  others  while  excepting  her  would  have 
excited  jealousy  and  complaints.  The  girls 
who  sat  in  that  part  of  the  room  were  de 
tained  after  school  and  treated  to  one  of 
Mrs.  Dumont's  tender  but  caustic  lectures 
on  the  dishonorableness  of  secret  ill-doing. 
Drusilla  bore  silently  her  share  of  the 
reproof.  But  at  the  last  the  schoolmistress 
said : 

"'Now,  my  dears,  it  may  be  that  there 
is  some  one  among  you  not  guilty  of  mis 
conduct.  If  there  is,  I  know  I  can  trust  you 
to  tell  me  who  is  not  to  blame.' 

"  '  Drusilla  never  talks,'  they  all  said  at 
once,  while  Drusilla,  girl  like,  fell  to  crying. 

"But  the  most  remarkable  illustration 
of  Mrs.  Dumont's  skill  in  matters  of  disci 
pline  was  shown  in  a  case  in  which  all  the 
boys  of  the  school  were  involved,  and  were 
for  a  short  time  thrown  into  antagonism  to 
154 


Two      Great       Educators 

a  teacher  whose  ascendency   over  them  had 
been  complete. 

"We  were  playing  'townball'  on  the 
common,  at  a  long  distance  from  the  school 
room.  Townball  is  one  of  the  old  games 
from  which  the  more  scientific  but  not  half 
so  amusing  '  national  game  '  of  baseball  has 
since  been  evolved.  In  that  day  the  national 
game  was  not  thought  of.  Eastern  youth 
played  field-base,  and  Western  boys  town- 
ball,  in  a  free  and  happy  way,  with  soft  balls, 
primitive  bats,  and  no  nonsense.  There  were 
no  scores,  but  a  catch  or  a  cross-out  in  town- 
ball  put  the  whole  side  out,  leaving  the  others 
to  take  the  bat  or  'paddle,'  as  it  was  appro 
priately  called.  The  very  looseness  of  the 
game  gave  opportunity  for  many  ludicrous 
mischances  and  surprising  turns,  which  made 
it  a  most  joyous  play. 

"  Either  because  the  wind  was  blowing 

adversely,  or  because  the  play  was  more  than 

commonly  interesting,  we  failed  to  hear  the 

ringing  of  Mrs.  Dumont's  bell  at  one  o'clock. 

155 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

The   afternoon  wore  on  until  more  than  an 
hour    of    school    time    had    passed,    when 
some  one  suddenly  bethought  himself.     We 
dropped  the  game  and  started,  pell-mell,  full 
of  consternation,  for  the  school-room.     We 
would  at  that  moment  have  preferred  to  face 
an  angry  schoolmaster,  with  his  beechen  rod, 
than  to  have  offended  one  whom  we  rever 
enced   so    much.     The  girls  all  sat  in  their 
places ;  the  teacher   was    sitting,   silent   and 
awful,  in  her  rocking-chair;  in  the  hour  and 
a   half  no    lessons   had    been    recited.     We 
shuffled  into  our  seats  and  awaited  the  storm. 
It  was  the   High  School,  and  the  boys  were 
mostly  fifteen  or   sixteen  years  of  age,  but 
the   schoolmistress   had   never  a  rod    in   the 
room.     Such    weapons   are    for    people    of 
fewer  resources  than  she.     Very  quietly  she 
talked  to  us,  but  with  great  emphasis.     She 
gave  no  chance   for  explanation  or  apology. 
She  was  hopelessly  hurt  and  offended.     We 
had  humiliated  her  before  the  whole  town, 
she  said.     She  should  take  away  from  us  the 
156 


Two      Great      Educators 

morning  and  afternoon  recess  for  a  week. 
She  would  demand  an  explanation  from  us 
to-morrow. 

"  It  was  not  possible  that  a  company  of 
boys  could  be  kept  for  half  an  hour  in  such 
a  moral  sweat-box  as  that  to  which  she  treated 
us  without  growing  angry.  When  school 
was  dismissed  we  held  a  running  indigna 
tion  meeting,  as  we  walked  toward  home. 
Of  course,  we  all  spoke  at  once.  But  after 
awhile  the  more  moderate  saw  that  the 
teacher  had  some  reason.  Nevertheless,  one 
boy*  was  appointed  to  draft  a  written  reply 
that  should  set  forth  our  injured  feelings.  I 
remember  in  what  perplexity  that  committee 
found  himself.  With  every  hour  he  felt  more 
and  more  that  the  teacher  was  right  and  the 
boys  wrong,  and  that  by  the  next  morning 
the  reviving  affection  of  the  scholars  for  the 
beloved  and  venerated  schoolmistress  would 

*The  "  one  boy  "  thus  commissioned  was  Edward  Eggleston,  though  his 
modesty  forbade  him  to  say  so.  He  was  recognized  as  morally  and  intellec 
tually  the  superior  of  all  of  us — the  captain  of  the  school  in  all  matters  involv 
ing  brains  or  character,  AUTHOR. 

157 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

cause  them  to  appreciate  this.  So  that  the 
address  which  was  presented  for  their  signa 
tures  did  not  breathe  much  indignation.  I 
can  almost  recall  every  word  of  that  some 
what  pompous  but  very  sincere  petition.  It 
was  about  as  I  give  it  here: 

Honored  Madam  :  — 

In  regard  to  our  offence  of  yesterday,  we  beg  that  you 
will  do  us  the  justice  to  believe  that  it  was  not  intentional. 
We  do  not  ask  you  to  remit  the  punishment  you  have  inflicted 
in  taking  away  our  recess,  but  we  do  ask  you  to  remit  the 
heavier  penalty  we  have  incurred,  your  own  displeasure. 

"The  boys  all  willingly  signed  this 
except  one,  who  was  perhaps  the  only  con 
scious  offender  in  the  party.  He  confessed 
that  he  had  observed  that  the  sun  was  '  get- 
ing  a  little  slanting '  while  we  were  at  play,  but 
as  his  side  'had  the  paddles,'  he  did  not  say 
anything  until  they  were  put  out.  The  un 
willing  boy  wanted  more  indignation  in  the 
address,  and  he  wanted  the  recess  back. 
But  when  all  the  others  had  signed  he  did 
not  dare  leave  his  name  off,  but  put  it  at  the 
bottom  of  the  list. 

158 


EDWARD   EGGLESTON    IN   1865 


Two      Great       Educators 

"With  trembling  hands  we  gave  the 
paper  to  the  schoolmistress.  How  some 
teachers  would  have  used  such  a  paper  as  a 
means  of  further  humiliation  to  the  offenders ! 
How  few  could  have  used  it  as  she  did  !  The 
morning  wore  on  without  recess.  The  les 
sons  were  heard  as  usual.  As  the  noon  hour 
drew  near  Mrs.  Dumont  rose  from  her  chair 
and  went  into  the  library.  We  all  felt  that 
something  was  going  to  happen.  She  came 
out  with  a  copy  of  Shakespeare,  which  she 
opened  at  the  fourth  scene  of  the  fourth  act 
of  the  second  part  of  King  Henry  IV. 
Giving  the  book  to  my  next  neighbor  and 
myself,  she  bade  us  read  the  scene,  alter 
nating  with  the  change  of  speaker.  You 
remember  the  famous  dialogue  in  that  scene 
between  the  dying  king  and  the  prince  who 
has  prematurely  taken  the  crown  from  the 
bedside  of  the  sleeping  king.  It  was  all 
wonderfully  fresh  to  us  and  to  our  school 
mates,  whose  interest  was  divided  between 
the  scene  and  a  curiosity  as  to  the  use  the 
159 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

teacher  meant  to  make  of  it.     At  length  the 
reader  who  took  the  king's  part  read: 

'  O  my  son  ! 

Heaven  put  it  in  thy  mind  to  take  it  hence, 
That  thou  mightst  win  the  more  thy  father's  love, 
Pleading  so  wisely  in  excuse  of  it.' 

"  Then  she  took  the  book  and  closed  it. 
The  application  was  evident  to  all,  but  she 
made  us  a  touching  little  speech,  full  of 
affection,  and  afterward  restored  the  recess. 
She  detained  the  girls  after  we  had  gone,  to 
read  to  them  the  address,  that  she  might 
'show  them  what  noble  brothers  they  had.' 
Without  doubt  she  made  overmuch  of  our 
nobleness.  But  no  one  knew  better  than 
Mrs.  Dumont  that  the  surest  way  of  evoking 
the  best  in  man  or  boy  is  to  make  the  most 
of  the  earliest  symptoms  of  it.  From  that 
hour  our  schoolmistress  had  our  whole  hearts ; 
we  loved  her  and  reverenced  her ;  we  were 
thoughtless  enough,  but  for  the  most  of  us 
her  half-suspected  wish  was  a  supreme  law. 

"  So,  after  all,  it  does  not  matter  that  the 

360 


Two      Great       Educators 

world  no  longer  reads  her  stories  or  remem 
bers  her  poems.  Her  life  always  seemed  to 
me  a  poem,  or  something  better  than  a 
poem." 

At  the  risk  of  seeming  intrusive,  I  ven 
ture  to  add  to  Edward's  reminiscences  of 
Mrs.  Dumont,  one  of  my  own.  I  do  so 
because  the  incident  I  have  to  relate  addi 
tionally  illustrates  Mrs.  Dumont's  peculiar 
gift  of  seeing,  in  each  case,  to  what  motive 
the  strongest  appeal  could  be  made. 

Until  I  came  under  her  instruction,  I 
had  not  been  able  to  learn  to  write.  All  my 
previous  teachers  had  failed  to  teach  me 
even  the  rudiments  of  that  art.  One  after 
another  of  them  had  abandoned  the  effort 
in  disgust,  convinced  that  there  was  a  natu 
ral  inaptitude  on  my  part  which  no  effort 
could  overcome.  In  addition  to  the  instruc 
tion  given  me  in  ordinary  schools,  I  had  been 
placed  successively  under  the  tuition  of  sev 
eral  peripatetic  writing  masters  who  had 
come  our  way,  but  all  to  no  purpose.  Do 
161 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

what  they  would  I  could  not  learn  to  write. 
I  could  not  myself  read  my  own  manuscript 
after  it  had  "grown  cold."  The  pen,  as  my 
teachers  made  me  hold  it,  was  as  unwieldy  in 
my  grasp  as  a  cord-wood  stick  or  a  fence 
rail.  I  could  do  nothing  with  it. 

My  latest  writing  master  was  still  in 
town,  achieving  distinction  by  teaching  all 
the  young  people,  and  some  of  their  elders, 
to  make  u  hair  lines  "for  their  up  strokes 
and  heavily  shaded  ones  for  down  strokes, 
and  to  decorate  their  paper  with  elaborately 
meaningless  "flourishes."  He  had  made  a 
positively  desperate  attempt  to  teach  me  to 
write.  He  had  tied  up  my  fingers  with  blue 
ribbons  to  compel  me  to  hold  my  pen  cor 
rectly.  He  had  written  the  word  u  miserable  " 
across  each  page  of  my  copy-book — empha 
sizing  his  criticism  by  even  more  elaborate 
flourishes  than  usual.  He  had  called  me 
"dunce,"  "  booby  "  and  other  pet  names  of 
like  sort,  and  finally  he  had  dismissed  me 
from  his  school,  sending  my  mother  a  letter, 
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Two      G  r  e  a  t      Educators 

in  which  he  assured  her  that  it  was  useless  to 
make  any  further  effort  to  teach  me  an  art 
which  I  was  wholly  incapable  of  learning. 

I  suppose  that  Mrs.  Dumont  had  been 
informed  of  all  this.  At  any  rate,  when  I 
asked  her  to  excuse  me  from  all  writing 
exercises,  she  assumed  a  look  of  admiring 
astonishment  and  asked: 

"Why,  has  Mr.  Wilson  (the  writing 
master)  taught  you  to  write  so  well  that  you 
can  learn  no  more?  He  must  be  a  wonder 
ful  teacher!" 

Only  the  pride  and  resolution  of  a 
sturdy  boy  kept  back  the  tears  as  I  answered, 
in  deep  humiliation : 

u  No,  Mrs.  Dumont,  I   can  never  learn 


to  write." 


"  Who  says  that?  "  she  asked,  quietly. 

u  Mr.  Wilson  and — and  every  teacher  I 
ever  had." 

u  Let  me  look  at  your  hand,  George," 
she  gently  said,  and  I  held  it  out  for  inspec 
tion.  She  seemed  to  study  it  closely,  manip- 

163 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

ulating  the  lingers  one  after  another.  Then 
she  said: 

u  I  hear  that  you  are  the  best  marble 
player  in  town.  Is  that  so  ?  " 

My  pockets  at  that  moment  were  bulg 
ing  with  a  multitude  of  marbles  which  I  had 
recently  won,  and  I  pleaded  guilty  to  a 
degree  of  skill  in  that  sport  which  made  it 
risky  for  any  boy  to  try  conclusions  with  me 
in  a  game  of  "  keeps." 

"And  yet  Mr.  Wilson  says  you  cannot 
learn  to  write  ?  Perhaps  he  called  you  a 
'booby,' too?" 

u  Yes,"  I  answered,  "  and  a  '  dunce.'  " 

"  Perhaps  he  tied  up  your  fingers  in 
blue  ribbons  to  make  you  hold  the  pen  in 
his  way?  " 

I  was  well  nigh  appalled  by  this  exhibi 
tion  of  mind  reading,  but  I  managed  to 
answer  that  he  had  done  precisely  as  she 
had  said. 

"Well,  now,  George,"  she  said,  in  her 
peculiarly  caressing  voice,  "you  and  I  are 
164 


Two      Great       Educators 

going  to  find  out  who  is  the  '  booby '  in  this 
case — you,  who  can  learn  anything  you  please, 
or  a  writing  master  who  doesn't  know  that 
a  boy  who  can  play  marbles  can  be  taught  to 
write.  Now,  I'll  tell  you  what  you  and  I  are 
going  to  do.  I  am  going  to  teach  you  to 
write  a  clear,  legible  arfd  sensible  hand  ;  and 
two  weeks  from  to-day — don't  forget  to 
remind  me  of  the  date — two  weeks  from  to 
day  you  are  going  to  write  a  letter  to  Mr. 
Wilson.  I  will  dictate  it,  and  you  shall 
write  it  and  sign  it.  When  he  gets  it  he 
too  will  know  who  the  '  booby  '  is." 

That  wise  woman's  battle  was  won.  No 
teacher  had  ever  talked  to  me  in  any  such 
way  as  that.  None  had  ever  so  aroused  my 
ambition.  In  that  hour  I  made  up  my  mind 
that  I  would  learn  to  write,  and  to  write  well, 
if  I  had  to  give  all  my  nights  and  days  to  the 
task.  Mrs.  Dumont  believed  in  me;  her  faith 
should  not  be  disappointed.  She  had  only 
to  tell  me  what  to  do  and  how,  and  I  would 
do  it,  even  if  it  involved  physical  torture. 
165 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

And  how  wisely  she  set  to  work  to 
teach  me !  First  of  all  she  told  me  that  all 
"flourishing"  in  writing  was  a  silly  thing, 
not  only  useless  but  positively  harmful,  in 
that  it  interfered  with  legibility.  Secondly, 
she  ridiculed  the  idea,  beloved  of  writing 
masters,  that  the  up'strokes  should  be  "  hair 
lines,"  and  the  down  strokes  heavily  shaded. 

"  Why  is  not  one  part  of  a  letter  as  im 
portant  as  any  other  part?"  she  asked. 
Then  she  explained  to  me  that  the  object 
one  has  in  view  in  writing  is  to  set  down  the 
words  in  such  a  way  that  other  people  may 
read  what  you  have  written;  that  absolute 
legibility  is  the  first  and  chief  virtue  of  a 
handwriting,  and  that  the  only  other  thing 
to  be  sought  after  is  facility — the  ability  to 
write  rapidly  and  easily. 

This  instruction  gave  me  a  totally  new 
conception  of  the  art  I  was  set  to  learn,  and 
a  very  helpful  conception  it  was,  particularly 
after  I  observed  how  beautiful  my  teacher's 
handwriting  was  in  its  absolute  simplicity. 
166 


Two      Great      Educators 

"  Now,  to  begin  with,"  she  said,  when  I 
took  my  first  writing  lesson  at  her  hands, 
"you  are  to  hold  the  pen  in  the  way  that 
seems  most  natural  to  you — the  way  which 
best  enables  you  to  make  the  marks  you 
intend." 

I  welcomed  this  permission  and  grasped 
my  pen  in  a  peculiarly  awkward  way. 

"You  do  hold  a  pen  rather  queerly," 
she  said.  "  But  never  mind  that  now.  We'll 
correct  that  little  by  little  as  we  go  on.  At 
present  you  are  going  to  learn  to  write  legi 
bly,  giving  no  heed  to  anything  else." 

To  my  utter  astonishment  I  could  read 
the  lines  I  wrote  for  my  first  lesson.  With 
in  three  or  four  days  my  handwriting  began 
to  look  like  Mrs.  Dumont's  own,  and  by 
the  end  of  the  appointed  two  weeks  this 
resemblance  had  become  so  close  that  the 
two  were  distinguishable  only  by  the  greater 
certainty  and  precision  of  form  that  marked 
hers. 

Then  came  the  letter  to  Mr.  Wilson. 
167 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

It  ran  somewhat  as  follows — for  I  think  I 
remember  almost  verbatim  a  missive  which 
it  gave  me  boundless  joy  to  write  at  my 
teacher's  dictation: 

"  Dear  Sir  : — 

I  am  writing  this  letter  at  the  dictation  of  my  teacher, 
Mrs.  Dumont.  Mrs.  Dumont  thinks  you  should  be  pleased 
to  see  that,  after  two  weeks  of  instruction,  I  have  learned  to 
write  a  legible  and  sensible  hand,  and  that  I  am  not  quite 
so  hopeless  a  booby  as  you  thought  me." 

I  begged  permission  to  insert  the  word 
"  intelligent"  before  the  word  u  instruction," 
but  my  teacher  said  me  nay. 

"  He  will  be  sufficiently  taught  by  the 
letter  as  it  stands,"  she  explained. 


168 


u 


m 

iXvJ 


CHAPTER    IX. 

The   Formative  Period. 

NDER  the  influences  described  in 
the  last  preceding  chapter,  Ed 
ward's  mind  developed  rapidly. 
His  extensive  reading  of  the  best 
books,  and,  still  more,  his  intimacy  with  two 
such  minds  as  Guilford  Eggleston'sand  Mrs. 
Dumont's,  could  not  fail  to  aid  and  hasten 
the  intellectual  and  moral  development  of 
a  boy  so  gifted  and  so  earnest  as  he. 

The  results  are  easily  enough  under 
stood,  but  they  were  somewhat  paradoxical. 
Edward  at  one  and  the  same  time  grew 
much  older  and  much  younger  than  he  had 
been.  In  his  thinking  he  became  more 
mature  than  before ;  in  his  spirit  he  grew 
far  more  boyish  than  he  had  ever  been. 

Under  spur  of  the  ascetic  religious 
teaching  he  had  received  from  the  pulpit 

169 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

utterances  of  men  whose  oratorical  exag 
gerations  he  took  in  their  literal  sense,  Ed 
ward  had  become  positively  morbid  in  his 
conscientiousness,  during  his  early  youth. 
As  an  illustration,  I  remember  that  at  one 
time — when  he  had  attained  the  ripe  age  of 
eleven — he  suddenly  began  a  rigid  suppres 
sion  of  conversational  gifts  which  were  ex 
tremely  good  in  one  so  young.  Often  he 
would  remain  silent  for  hours.  When  he 
talked  at  all  he  stripped  his  sentences  of 
every  word  that  could  be  spared,  and  spoke 
only  of  serious  and  solemn  things.  His 
natural  impulse  to  lightness  in  conversation 
was  repressed.  His  humor,  which  was 
always  the  delight  of  his  companions,  was 
kept  under  a  restraint  as  severe  as  if  he  had 
been  a  monk  in  a  season  of  "retreat." 

Against  all  this  the  thoughtless  young 
ster  who  writes  these  lines  out  of  a  gray- 
haired  memory  violently  revolted.  I  wanted 
my  brother  back.  I  wanted  to  hear  him 
talk.  I  wanted  the  smiles  on  my  own 
170 


The        Formative        Period 

face  that  his- humor  always  engraved  there. 
I  wanted  to  be  in  touch  with  his  natu 
rally  genial  and  jovial  spirit  again.  So  I 
challenged  him  to  tell  me  why  he  had  sud 
denly  become  so  restrained  in  speech.  For 
answer  he  opened  the  New  Testament  and 
showed  me  the  passage  which  reads: 

"  But  I  say  unto  you,  That  every  idle 
word  that  men  shall  speak,  they  shall  give 
account  thereof  in  the  day  of  judgment." 

After  the  fashion  of  that  time  he  had 
taken  that  passage  literally,  as  he  took,  and 
as  the  preachers  insisted  upon  taking  every 
other  passage  of  the  Scriptures.  And  by 
"idle  words"  he  understood  the  text  to 
mean  all  unnecessary  words. 

In  those  days  well-ordered  young  per 
sons  were  carefully  taught  to  say  "yes, 
ma'am "  and  "  no,  ma'am,"  "yes,  sir"  and 
"no,  sir";  but  Edward's  spiritual  eye  was 
fixed  upon  "  the  day  of  judgment,"  and  in 
fear  of  that  he  resolutely  dropped  the 
"ma'am"  and  "sir,"  as  "idle  words"  for 
171 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

which,  if  he  spoke  them,  he  must  give  an 
account  at  that  dread  time. 

In  brief,  Edward  was  beset  in  his  boy 
hood  by  that  "  lust  after  perfection,"  of 
which  he  afterwards  pointed  out  the  evil 
consequences  in  his  novel  of  New  York  life, 
uThe  Faith  Doctor,"  calling  it  "the  realest 
peril  of  great  souls." 

Indeed,  his  condition  of  mind  and  soul 
for  a  time  was  the  original  from  which  in 
later,  maturer,  and  more  enlightened  years,  he 
drew  the  portrait  of  Phillida,  the  devotee 
heroine  of  that  novel. 

The  influence  of  Guilford  Eggleston 
and  Mrs.  Dumont  corrected  all  this,  and 
Edward  learned  of  them  a  wiser  and  a- more 
wholesome  philosophy  of  life  than  that  which 
the  half-baked  theology  of  that  time  had 
taught  him.  He  learned  of  them  a  better 
gospel  than  that  of  asceticism.  He  grew 
healthier  of  mind,  and  with  that  change 
came  a  greater  bodily  health.  He  was  still 
lacking  in  physical  robustness,  but  he  had 
172 


The        Formative        Period 

learned  that  it  was  his  right  to  enjoy  and  to 
exercise  such  physical  capacities  as  were  his. 
The  first  result  of  this  was  that  his 
health  did  not  break  down  under  school 
work  as  it  had  so  often  done  before,  though 
he  was  studying  harder  and  reading  more 
than  he  had  ever  done.  The  tonic  adminis 
tered  to  his  mind  was  potent  also  in  strength 
ening  his  body.  Feeling  now  that  he  might 
indulge,  without  sin,  those  impulses  of  physi 
cal  activity  which  nature  implants  in  all 
boys  for  their  good,  Edward  entered  upon 
our  sports  with  a  spirit  that  quickly  made 
him  monarch  of  the  playground.  Others 
of  us  could  outrun  him.  Some  of  us  could 
throw  or  bat  or  catch  a  ball  with  greater 
precision  than  he  could.  But  we  were  a 
careless,  heedless  crew,  while  he  brought  his 
conscience  to  bear  upon  our  playground 
games  as  earnestly  as  he  had  ever  done  in 
more  important  things.  To  him  it  seemed 
that,  having  accepted  a  place  on  one  or  the 
other  side  of  a  game,  he  was  in  duty  and 
173 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

conscience  bound  to  do  his  very  best  for  the 
success  of  his  side.  We  would  sometimes 
"miss"  through  heedlessness  or  a  lack  of 
sufficient  care  in  the  performance  of  our 
parts;  he  never  did.  If  he  missed  at  all  it 
was  because  he  could  not  avoid  doing  so  by 
the  most  conscientious  endeavor.  If  one  of 
us  missed  catching  or  batting  a  ball  that  our 
known  skill  made  it  possible  to  catch  or  bat, 
our  comrades  jeered  at  us  as  "butter  rin 
gers,"  or  more  seriously  quarreled  with  us 
for  carelessness.  But  if  Edward  missed  it 
was  understood  that  the  catch  or  bat  stroke 
was  beyond  his  utmost  power  to  achieve. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  conscientious 
ness  in  play,  he  soon  came  to  be  the  first 
boy  selected  whenever  we  "chose  up"  for  a 
game.  We  all  knew  that  there  were  more 
skilful  players  than  he  among  us;  but  we 
also  knew  that  we  could  trust  his  conscien 
tiousness  of  endeavor  to  give  better  results 
in  the  game  than  our  superior  but  carelessly 
exercised  skill  could  hope  for. 
174 


The        Formative        Period 

His  moral  supremacy  was  even  more 
marked.  In  that  school-boy  republic  all 
were  equal  in  their  rights,  of  course,  and 
there  was  never  the  smallest  hesitation  on 
the  part  of  any  of  us  in  the  formation  or  the 
expression  of  an  opinion.  We  stoutly  in 
sisted  upon  freedom  of  speech  and  majority 
rule.  But  Edward's  speech,  though  no  freer 
than  that  of  any  other,  always  carried  greater 
weight,  and,  if  his  opinion  was  pronounced, 
he  constituted  a  majority  in  every  case. 

"  Seems  to  me  we  ought  to  do  so  and 
so,"  one  of  the  boys  would  say,  "  but  Ed. 
Eggleston  says  not,  and  of  course  he  knows 
best." 

"Of  course  he  does,"  the  rest  of  us 
would  answer,  and  that  settled  the  matter. 
It  was  a  case  of  MacGregor's  seat  being  the 
head  of  the  table. 

This  supremacy  of  personal  influence 
was  not  gained  by  self-assertion,  for  there 
was  no  boy  in  the  school  less  given  than  Ed 
ward  was  to  assume  the  rights  of  a  dictator. 
175 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

It  was  solely  the  result  of  our  confidence  in 
his  superior  judgment,  and,  still  more  im 
portant,  his  absolute  conscientiousness.  With 
us  the  wish  was  often  father  to  the  thought; 
with  him  it  never  was.  With  us  desire 
might  influence  conviction;  with  him,  we 
knew,  personal  preference  played  no  part  at 
all.  And  so  his  judgments  were  always  final 
and  conclusive,  however  clamorously  we 
might  contend  against  them  in  arguing  the 
matter  in  hand  before  the  decision  was  ren 
dered. 

I  remember  that  we  were  once  engaged 
in  a  hot  discussion  of  this  kind  when  Mr. 
Dumont,  the  husband  of  our  teacher,  and  a 
lawyer  of  great  distinction,  drove  up  in  his 
buggy.  He  stopped  the  horse  and  held  up 
his  hand  for  silence,  and  the  silence  instantly 
came. 

"Boys,"  he  said,  "I  have  a  suggestion 
to  make  to  you.  In  the  days  of  my  young 
manhood  I  used  to  attend  town  meetings. 
The  people  were  disposed  to  squabble  some- 

17G 


The        Formative        Period 

times,  just  as  you  boys  were  doing  a  moment 
ago.  To  prevent  that  the  town  meeting 
always  chose  one  man  to  be  'moderator,' 
and  gave  him  authority  to  keep  order  and 
decide  debates.  You  boys  ought  to  have  a 
'moderator." 

Instantly  one  of  the  boys  called  out: 

"Oh,  we  don't  need  a  moderator,  Mr. 
Dumont.  We  jabber  and  chatter  as  much 
as  we  please,  but  we  know  all  the  time  that 
when  Ed.  Eggleston  gets  ready  he'll  decide 
the  question,  and  that'll  end  it." 

Edward  was  meanwhile  using  his  influ 
ence  in  behalf  of  our  culture  in  other  ways. 
He  organized  a  debating  society  to  meet  in 
that  little  red  brick  building  in  our  grounds 
which  had  formerly  been  our  father's  law 
office,  and  which  now  served  Edward  and 
me  as  bedroom,  study  room  and  general 
headquarters. 

Of  this  association  he  was  promptly 
made  chairman,  and  although  he  was  not  yet 
sixteen  years  old,  he  set  to  work  to  make  of 
177 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

the  club  something  more  than  an  ordinary 
debating  society.  It  was  he  that  dictated 
our  choice  of  subjects  for  debate,  and  having 
chosen  them,  he  pointed  out  to  each  of  the 
debaters  the  books  that  ought  to  be  read  in 
preparation  for  an  intelligent  discussion  of 
the  subject  in  hand.  Many  of  these  books 
were  drawn  from  our  mother's  library — by 
all  odds  the  richest  in  Vevay  in  the  list  of  its 
standard  books  with  the  single  exception  of 
Mrs.  Dumont's  collection,  which  was  held 
always  open  to  our  freest  use.  But  Edward 
borrowed  for  our  reading  everything  else 
that  could  be  had,  and  which  could,  by  any 
possibility,  help  to  enlighten  our  minds. 
The  Presbyterian  minister  had  a  hundred 
books  or  so  which  he  freely  placed  at  our 
disposal,  and,  upon  learning  what  we  were 
doing,  Guilford  Eggleston  wrote  to  Edward, 
commanding  him  to  write  each  week,  stating 
the  contemplated  subjects  of  debate,  in  order 
that  he  might  select  and  send  to  Vevay  all 
the  books  in  his  own  library  that  might 
178 


The        Formative        Period 

in  any  wise  bear  upon  the  subject  under 
discussion. 

This  wise  and  most  generous  mentor 
went  even  further  than  that.  Crippled  as 
he  was  at  the  time,  by  reason  of  an  accident 
involving  his  ankle,  he  made  a  special  jour 
ney  to  Vevay  in  order  that  he  might  talk  to 
our  debating  club  and  show  us  how  to  make 

o 

the  most  profitable  use  of  our  time  in  read 
ing.  Full  of  wisdom  and  discretion  as  he 
was,  he  was  equally  full  of  good  spirits,  and 
a  matchless  sympathy  with  boyish  ambitions 
for  self  improvement.  He  talked  to  us,  not 
from  a  superior  height,  but  upon  a  level, 
and  perhaps  no  service  that  Edward  ever 
did  to  his  comrades  was  so  greatly  good  as 
bringing  Guilford  Eggleston  to  talk  to  us. 

In  these  endeavors  to  carry  his  com 
rades  along  with  him  in  his  apprenticeship 
to  culture,  Edward  was  mindful  of  the  weaker 
ones  in  a  specially  tender  fashion.  There  was 
one  boy  in  the  town  who  did  not  belong  to 
the  school,  because  he  was  not  sufficiently 

179 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

educated  to  enter  it.  He  was  the  son  of  an 
Irish  laborer,  but  he  had  inherited  none  of 
his  father's  wit  or  shrewdness.  His  sisters 
had  successfully  passed  through  Mr.  Was- 
son's  school,  and  stood  well  as  young  women 
of  education  and  refinement;  but  poor  John 
had  a  certain  intellectual  deficiency  which 
sadly  stood  in  his  way.  We  boys  did  not 
think  of  him  even  as  a  possible  member  of 
our  coterie.  But  one  day  he  met  Edward 
and  said  to  him: 

"  I  love  verses.  Have  you  got  any  verses 
in  your  club  ?" 

Edward  answered  that  we  had  not  as  yet 
taken  up  poetry,  but  that  he  would  act  upon 
the  suggestion  at  once  and  introduce  some 
exercises  that  should  involve  verse.  Then 
he  summoned  the  rest  of  us  and  proposed 
that  we  should  elect  John  a  member  of  our 
circle.  We  instantly  and  almost  clamor 
ously  objected.  That  boy  was  not  of  our 
kind — not  in  our  class,  we  argued. 

'That   is   precisely  the  reason  why  we 
180 


The        Formative        Period 

should  take  him  into  our  society,"  Edward 
rejoined.  "  Fie  needs  our  association  as  no 
one  of  us  boys  needs  it." 

So,  under  the  orders  of  our  master 
mind  we  took  John  into  our  society,  and 
Edward  so  rearranged  our  programs  as  to 
include  in  each  of  them  the  recitation  or  the 
reading  of  a  certain  proportion  of  inspiring 
verse. 

I  saw  John  three  years  ago  and  talked 
with  him.  He  is  an  elderly  man  now,  and, 
while  still  a  rather  uneducated  person,  he  is 
a  good  citizen,  a  good  husband  and  a  good 
father.  He  said  to  me  : 

"  It  was  mighty  good  of  you  boys  to 
take  me  in,  and  that  was  the  turning  point 
with  me.  Somehow,  after  you  let  me  into 
the  club,  I  felt  that  I  mustn't  go  wrong,  and 
I  didn't.  I  remembered  the  verses  Edward 
used  to  say,  about — 

'  So  live,  that  when  thy  summons  comes  to  join 
The  innumerable  caravan  which  moves 
To  that  mysterious  realm  where  each  shall  take 
His  chamber  in  the  silent  halls  of  death, 

181 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

Thou  go  not  like  the  quarry  slave  at  night, 
Scourged  to  his  dungeon,  but  sustained  and  soothed 
By  an  unfaltering  trust,  approach  thy  grave 
Like  one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  couch 
About  him,  and  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams.' 

"You  boys  made  a  man  of  me  when 
you  let  me  join  that  club.  I'm  not  much  of 
a  job  for  such  fellows  to  turn  out,  but  any 
how  you  made  me  the  man  I  am,  and  God 
only  knows  what  I  should  have  become  if 
you  hadn't  let  me  in." 

Here  surely  was  one  of  Edward  Eggles- 
ton's  sheaves,  of  a  kind  which  no  man  need 
be  ashamed  to  offer  to  the  Supreme  Master 
of  the  Universe  in  proof  of  his  harvest's 
worthiness. 

One  of  the  results  of  Edward's  larger 
enlightenment  at  this  time  was  that  I  suffered 
at  his  hands  the  only  thrashing  I  ever  got 
from  any  boy.  I  was  accustomed  to  fight 
my  way  through  all  difficulties,  as  the  man 
ner  of  Hoosier  boys  was.  I  can  remember 
only  a  very  few  of  my  schoolmates  with 
whom  I  did  not,  at  one  time  or  other,  settle 
182 


The        Formative        Period 

a  controversy  by  a  bout  with  bare  knuckles; 
but  as  I  was  unusually  strong,  uncommonly 
nimble,  and  much  given  to  ready  aggressive 
ness  in  conflict,  it  had  never  happened  to 
me  to  get  so  much  the  worst  of  any  battle 
as  to  be  compelled  to  cry  u'nough" — the 
accepted  form  of  surrender  at  that  time. 

In  his  earlier  boyhood,  Edward  had 
adopted  the  non-combatant  teaching  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  had  resolutely 
abided  by  it,  with  the  result  that  I  had  been 
obliged  to  thrash  several  fellows  bigger  than 
myself  by  way  of  avenging  assaults  made 
upon  him,  which  he  would  not  himself  resist. 
But  under  his  new  instruction  Edward  so 
far  abandoned  the  practice  of  non-resistance 
as  to  give  me,  on  one  occasion,  the  one  good, 
sound  thrashing  that  I  so  greatly  needed  for 
the  chastening  of  my  spirit. 

The  way  of  it  was  this.  Edward  and  I, 
with  a  school-fellow,  Will  Campbell,  remained 
on  the  ice  one  day,  after  the  game  of  shinny 
was  done,  and  after  all  the  other  boys  had 

183 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

gone  home.  For  some  reason  which  I  can 
not  recall,  I  was  in  a  querulous,  cantankerous 
mood,  and  strongly  disposed  to  pick  a  quar 
rel  with  Will  Campbell.  Will  was  the  gen- 
tlest-natured  boy  in  the  town.  I  think  he 
could  have  whipped  me  easily  in  a  stand-up 
fight,  as  he  was  a  year  or  so  my  senior  and 
very  athletic,  but  he  was  by  nature  averse  to 
quarreling.  So  on  this  occasion  he  accepted 
my  taunts  meekly — so  meekly  that  I  wanted 
to  whip  him  for  not  whipping  me.  At  last 
I  threatened  to  strike  him  with  my  shinny 
stick.  Thereupon  Edward  fiercely  turned 
upon  me  and  said: 

"George,  if  you  strike  Will  I'll  thrash 
you." 

Now  I  perfectly  well  knew  that  he  meant 
what  he  said.  I  also  perfectly  well  knew 
that  if  I  chose  to  resist,  I  was  greatly  more 
than  a  match  for  my  half-invalid  brother,  and 
could  easily  and  quickly  dispose  of  any  effort 
he  might  make  to  overcome  my  superior 
strength  and  agility.  But  I  knew  also  that 
184 


The        Formative        Period 

should  Edward  attack  me,  I  would  offer  no 
manner  of  resistance.  I  could  no  more 
think  of  striking  him  than  of  striking  my 
mother. 

Still  his  words  constituted  what  we  boys 
called  a  u  dare,"  and  it  was  an  accepted  say 
ing  among  us  that  u  anybody  who  will  take  a 
dare  will  steal  a  sheep." 

I  did  not  really  want  or  intend  to  strike 
Will  Campbell  with  my  shinny  stick;  but  in 
saying  what  he  did,  Edward  had  in  effect 
"  dared"  me  to  give  the  blow,  and  by  all  the 
principles  of  school-boy  ethics  I  was  bound 
to  meet  the  "dare"  halfway.  So  I  struck 
Will,  not  violently,  and  not  even  in  a  fashion 
that  could  inflict  the  least  pain,  but  with  just 
sufficient  force  to  make  the  blow  good  as  an 
acceptance  of  the  challenge. 

Instantly  Edward  skated  to  the  shore 
and  deliberately  began  taking  off  his  skates. 
Mine  were  already  off,  and  as  I  was  much 
fleeter  of  foot  than  he,  I  might  easily  have 
run  away.  But  had  I  done  that,  I  should 

185 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

have  incurred  intolerable  disgrace  in  the  eyes 
of  all  the  boys  in  town.  So  I  stood  my 
ground,  and  presently  Edward,  in  righteous 
wrath,  assailed  me.  As  I  made  no  resist 
ance,  he  soon  had  me  on  my  back,  while  he 
sat  astride  my  chest,  vigorously  boxing  my 
ears  and  calling  to  me  to  say  "  'nough." 
That  I  refused  to  do,  and  to  this  day  I  am 
unable  to  guess  how  the  affair  would  have 
ended,  if  Will  Campbell  had  not  generously 
come  to  my  assistance,  dragging  Edward 
away. 

But  while  I  had  resolutely  refused  to  the 
very  end  to  cry  "  'nough,"  I  was  sufficiently 
conquered  to  answer  all  the  moral  purposes 
that  my  brother  had  had  in  view.  Recog 
nizing  the  generosity  of  Will  Campbell's  act 
in  coming  to  my  assistance,  I  held  out  my 
hand  to  the  boy  and  said:  "I  hope  I  didn't 
hurt  you,  Will !  I  didn't  mean  to." 

He    grasped     my    hand    warmly — dear, 
great-hearted  fellow  that  he  was — and  so  the 
"incident  was  closed,"  as  the  diplomats  say. 
186 


The        Formative        Period 

If  the  incidents  related  in  this  chapter 
seem  to  any  reader  trivial,  it  must  be  ad 
mitted  that  in  themselves  they  are  so.  But 
they  are  related,  as  everything  else  in  this 
most  irregularly  constructed  book  is,  by  way 
of  illustrating  the  life  conditions  that  helped 
in  the  development  of  Edward  Eggleston's 
mind,  and  at  the  same  time  showing  forth 
the  native  characteristics  of  a  person  who  was 
destined  later  to  make  his  mark  as  a  force  in 
American  life  and  letters. 

When  the  school  year  was  over,  Edward 
served  for  a  time  as  a  clerk  in  a  store,  kept 
by  Mr.  William  Shaw,  a  Scotchman  of  high 
and  singularly  lovable  character,  and  his  son, 
a  man  like  unto  himself,  who  is  still  in  active 
life.  I  do  not  know  but  that  I  should  in 
clude  Edward's  association  with  these  two 
men  of  exceptional  high-mindedness  and 
purity  as  another  of  the  forces  that  helped, 
at  the  formative  period  of  his  life,  to  mould 
him  into  the  man  that  he  afterwards  became. 
I  know  that  to  the  hour  of  his  death  he 

187 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

lovingly  cherished  the  memory  of  his  asso 
ciation  with  these  two  and  with  their  fami 
lies,  as  among  the  most  precious  of  his  recol 
lections. 

In  some  way,  too,  he  found  time  at  this 
period  to  work  gratuitously  in  the  printing 
office  of  the  local  newspaper,  where  he  not 
only  learned  to  set  type,  but  practiced  his 
writing  gift  by  contributing  now  and  then  to 
the  newspaper's  columns.  When  he  did  that 
he  set  up  his  thought  in  type  without  pre 
viously  putting  it  on  paper.  All  the  while 
he  maintained  his  comradery  with  Mrs. 
Dumont  who,  though  she  had  ceased  to  be 
his  teacher,  continued  to  be  not  only  his 
revered  friend,  but  also  his  mentor  in  all 
that  pertained  to  his  reading  and  thinking. 


188 


CHAPTER  X. 

The  Virginian  Influence. 

OTHING  in  the  way  of  formative 
influences  could  have  been  better 
than  the  life  of  these  years  was  as 
a  preparation  for  what  was  to  fol 
low  in  Edward  Eggleston's  moral  and  intel 
lectual  development.  Nor  could  any  sequel 
to  these  years  have  been  better  for  him  than 
that  which  came. 

Our  father's  relatives  in  Virginia  had 
long  urged  that  Edward  should  go  to  them 
for  a  prolonged  visit,  and  in  June,  1854, 
when  he  was  sixteen  years  of  age,  he  and 
our  only  sister,  four  or  five  years  his  junior, 
set  out  upon  this  first  pilgrimage  to  the  old 
home  of  our  people.  The  thirteen  months 
of  their  absence  constituted  the  first  separa 
tion  that  had  ever  occurred  between  Edward 
and  myself.  His  stay  in  Virginia  had  an 
189 


The     First     of    The.Hoosiers 

important  educational  influence  upon  his 
mind,  and  his  letters  thence  influenced  me 
in  a  way  that  few  other  things  have  ever 
done. 

Our  father's  only  brother,  a  childless 
man  of  middle  age,  was  master  of  the  old 
home  plantation  in  Amelia  county,  which 
had  been  the  family  seat  since  1635.  There 
all  our  race  had  been  nurtured  for  many 
generations.  Adjoining  that  plantation  was 
another  Eggleston  seat  of  like  age  in  family 
possession.  This  was  "  Egglestetton,"  which 
had  been  the  home  of  Major  Joseph  Eggles 
ton,  of  revolutionary  fame,  the  cherished 
second  in  command  of  Light  Horse  Harry 
Lee.  At  the  time  of  Edward's  stay  in  Vir 
ginia,  this  was  the  home  of  Major  Joseph 
Eggleston's  descendants.  These  two  planta 
tions  had  been  one  at  first,  constituting  a 
princely  domain.  But  when  the  father  of 
Major  Joseph  Eggleston  and  his  brother, 
our  great-grandfather,  had  come  of  age,  the 
vast  plantation  had  been  divided  between 
190 


The      Virginian       Influence 

them.  Since  that  time  neither  half  of  it  had 
suffered  any  further  division,  so  that  Edward 
found  there  in  effect  two  ancestral  homes 
open  to  him  with  a  welcome.  But  he  dwelt 
in  neither  of  them  for  any  considerable 
time.  He  went  instead  to  live  mainly  with 
our  uncle  by  marriage,  Mr.  Chastain  Cocke, 
a  planter  and  statesman,  whose  home  was 
in  the  adjoining  county  of  Powhatan. 

Chastain  Cocke  was  a  man  of  unusual 
ability  and  of  extraordinary  character.  I 
knew  him  well  a  little  later,  and  I  have  cer 
tainly  never  known  any  other  man  whom  I 
have  reckoned  his  superior  in  those  high 
qualities  of  manhood  which  there  are  still 
some  of  us  left  to  revere  in  the  name  of 
chivalry. 

Never  in  all  his  life  did  Chastain  Cocke 
knowingly  do  a  wrong  or  an  injustice  to  any 
human  being,  great  or  humble,  black  or 
white,  man,  woman  or  child.  Never  in  all 
his  life  did  he  fail  in  an  obligation  or  delay 
its  fulfilment  one  hour  beyond  the  appointed 
191 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

time,  no  matter  how  free  he  might  be  to 
delay,  or  how  much  of  trouble  it  might  cost 
him  to  meet  his  duty  on  time.  I  remember 
one  occasion  when  he  impressed  this  lesson 
of  good  faith  on  my  mind  in  a  striking  way. 
His  health  was  very  frail  at  the  time,  and 
the  weather  was  excessively  bad,  with  a  dis 
tressing  sleet  storm  on,  which  quickly  ren 
dered  the  clothing  of  any  one  venturing  out 
a  coat  of  icy  mail. 

He  called  me  to  him  immediately  after 
breakfast,  and  said  to  me: 

"This  is  terrible  weather,  my  boy,  but 
you  are  robust  and  fearless,  and  I  am  sure 
you  want  to  oblige  me." 

I  promptly  assured  him  that  nothing 
could  delight  me  more  than  to  render  him 
any  possible  service,  and  that,  as  for  bad 
weather,  I  rather  rejoiced  in  braving  it  than 
shrank  from  its  discomforts. 

UI  am  sure  of  that,"  he  said,  "and  I 
thank  you.  I  want  you  to  pick  out  the 
sturdiest  horse  in  my  stables  this  morning, 

192 


The       Virginian       Influence 

mount  him  and  ride  to  -  — ,"  naming  a  plan 
tation  thirty  miles  away.  "  When  you  are 
ready  I'll  give  you  your  commission." 

I  knew  the  horse  I  wanted — an  untamed 
stallion,  seventeen  hands  high,  with  the  tem 
per  of  a  maniac  and  the  physical  endurance 
of  a  locomotive.  Mounted  upon  that  beast's 
back,  booted  and  spurred,  and  additionally 
equipped  with  a  black-snake  whip  for  dis 
ciplinary  purposes,  I  departed  on  my  mis 
sion,  which  was  simply  to  pay  to  my  uncle's 
friend  at  the  other  end  of  the  journey  a  few 
hundred  dollars  which  happened  to  be  due 
on  that  day,  on  a  purchase  of  land. 

When  I  reached  my  destination,  after 
galloping  a  trifle  of  the  superflous  enthus 
iasm  out  of  that  superb  horse,  the  gentle 
man  to  whom  I  had  been  sent  to  make  the 
payment,  said  to  me : 

"  Has  your  uncle  gone  quite  daft  ?    Why 

should  he  make  you  ride  thirty  miles  through 

a   sleet   storm  like   this,  merely  to   pay  me 

money  which  he  knows  I    don't  want,  and 

193 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

which  I  couldn't  go  out  in  such  weather  to 
pay  out  again,  even  if  I  had  pressing  debts 
to  meet,  as  I  have  not?  Tell  him  for  me, 
please,  never  to  do  such  a  thing  again.  And 
now  that  you're  safe  here,  I'm  going  to 
keep  you  until  the  weather  grows  reasonable 
again." 

I  agreed  to  deliver  the  message,  but  de 
clined  the  hospitality  laughingly,  on  the 
ground  that  if  that  demoniacal  horse  were 
left  standing  in  a  stable  until  the  next  morn 
ing,  I  might  not  be  able  to  ride  him  at  all. 
My  real  reason  for  setting  out  on  my  return 
immediately  after  dinner,  was  that  I  knew  how 
anxious  my  good  uncle  would  be  about  me 
until  I  should  report  all  well  at  home  again. 

When  I  stalked  into  the  supper  room 
that  evening  at  8  o'clock,  with  all  my  gar 
ments  frozen  stiff,  my  uncle  welcomed  me 
warmly  enough  to  thaw  them  out;  but  he 
bade  me  go  to  my  room,  sending  a  negro 
boy  with  me,  and  saying : 

"I  will  not  take  another  mouthful  of 
194 


The    Virginian     Influence 

supper  until  you  return.  The  rest  can  go  on 
with  their  me.al.  Nelson,"  (addressing  the 
head  dining  room  servant),  "take  my  plate 
away.  Lay  a  little  table  for  your  Mas' 
George  and  myself,  and  send  word  to  Patty 
(the  cook)  to  prepare  the  very  best  supper 
she  can  for  us  two."  Then  turning  to  his 
wife,  my  father's  sister,  with  that  courtesy 
with  which  he  never  failed  to  treat  her  whom 
he  had  made  queen  of  his  household,  he 
said: 

"  Mary,  my  dear,  you'll  preside  at  our 
little  table,  I'm  sure.  But  meanwhile  please 
make  your  supper,  for  it  isn't  well  for  you  to 
have  your  meals  disturbed." 

When  we  were  seated  at  a  cosy  little 
table  before  the  fire,  for  I  was  still  shivering 
with  cold  after  my  sixty  miles'  ride  in  the 
storm,  I  delivered  the  messages  that  had 
been  given  to  me.  In  response  my  uncle 
said,  with  exceeding  emphasis: 

u  George,  I  should  have  made  that  ter 
rible  journey  myself  to-day  if  I  had  not  had 
195 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

your  young  man's  vigor  and  your  good  will 
to  act  as  my  substitute.  Of  course  I  knew 
that  Mr.  -  -  did  not  care  to  have  that 
money  paid  to-day;  but  all  rjiy  life  I  have 
made  it  a  rule  to  pay  every  dollar  I  owed  on 
the  precise  day  on  which  it  was  due,  no  mat 
ter  if  it  cost  me  two  dollars  for  every  one 
dollar  owed.  The  result  of  that  is  that  my 
name  is  good  in  every  bank  in  Richmond 
for  any  sum  that  I  may  happen  to  want. 
Let  me  commend  that  rule  to  you.  Remem 
ber  always  that  when  you  promise  to  pay 
money  on  the  21st  of  a  given  month,  your 
creditor  is  entitled  to  expect  it  on  that  day, 
and  not  on  the  22d.  He  may  have  obliga 
tions  of  his  own  to  meet,  and  he  may  have 
counted  upon  your  prompt  payment  as  his 
means  of  meeting  them.  No  man  need 
undertake  an  obligation  unless  he  wishes  to 
do  so.  But  having  undertaken  it,  he  is  in 
honor  bound  to  fulfil  it,  no  matter  what 
happens.  Now,  you  haven't  said  a  word 
about  it,  but  I  know  that  you  had  to  swim  a 

196 


The     Virg'inian     Influence 

swollen  river  twice  to-day,  in  order  to  make 
this  payment  for  me.  I  did  not  hesitate  to 
ask  you  to  do  that  in  redemption  of  my 
honor,  because  I  knew  the  loyalty  of  your 
affection.  But  if  I  had  not  had  you  for  a 
substitute,  I  should  have  made  the  journey 
myself,  swimming  the  river  as  a  necessary 
part  of  the  proceeding." 

How  true  it  was  that  Chastain  Cocke's 
name  was  good  in  any  Richmond  bank  for 
any  sum  that  he  might  ask  for,  and  all  be 
cause  of  his  life-long  habit  of  meeting  every 
obligation  in  the  hour  of  its  falling  due,  is 
best  illustrated  by  the  record  of  a  certain 
trying  experience. 

Besides  his  home  plantation  in  Virginia, 
he  had  two  cotton  plantations  in  Mississippi. 
The  two  used  a  single  gin  house,  and  one 
year  that  gin  house  burned,  destroying  the 
whole  of  his  cotton  crop.  It  became  neces 
sary  for  him  to  borrow  a  large  sum  of  money 
to  cover  his  domestic  and  plantation  ex 
penses  until  another  crop  should  come  in. 

197 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

The  bank  in  Richmond  readily  advanced 
the  money. 

About  that  time  a  friend  of  his  own,  a 
man  of  old  family  and  high  repute,  who  was 
an  inveterate  and  incurable  visionary,  asked 
Chastain  Cocke  to  endorse  his  paper  in 
order  that  he  might  raise  the  money  necessary 
to  carry  out  one  of  his  many  wild  schemes. 
My  uncle  refused,  upon  the  ground  that  he 
could  not  regard  the  project  as  a  sound  one. 
But  his  friend  was  so  sure  of  its  safety  that 
he  forged  Mr.  Cocke's  endorsement  upon  a 
note  for  five  thousand  dollars.  He  fully  in 
tended  to  take  up  the  note  before  it  should 
fall  due,  so  that  nobody  should  ever  know 
of  the  forgery  and  nobody  should  be  harmed 
by  it. 

As  usually  happens  in  such  cases,  the 
enterprise  failed,  and  one  day  my  uncle  re 
ceived  notice  that  a  note  for  five  thousand 
dollars,  signed  by  his  friend  and  endorsed 
by  himself,  would  fall  due  within  three  days, 
and  that,  as  the  drawer  of  the  note  had  given 
198 


The    Virg'inian     Influence 

notice  of  his  inability  to  pay,  the  bank  must 
look  to  Mr.  Cocke  to  meet  the  obligation. 

This  news  came  like  a  thunder  clap  out 
of  a  clear  sky  to  my  uncle.  He  had  never 
before  heard  of  the  note  in  question,  but  he 
promptly  went  to  Richmond  and,  visiting 
the  bank,  asked  to  see  the  paper.  A  glance 
at  it  revealed  the  entire  situation  to  him. 
But  the  guilty  man  was  the  representative 
of  an  old  and  highly  honored  family.  He 
had  a  wife  and  daughters  who  must  suffer 
lasting  disgrace  should  this  thing  become 
known.  So  my  uncle  decided  that  no  expo 
sure  should  be  made,  if  by  any  self-sacrifice 
he  could  avoid  that  misfortune.  He  said  to 
the  bank  officer: 

u  I  had  not  expected  to  be  called  upon 
to  pay  this  note.  I  have  made  no  prepara 
tion  for  the  emergency.  I  am  already  in 
debt  to  the  bank." 

Here  the  bank  officer  interrupted  him 
to  say : 

"That  makes    no    difference    whatever, 

199 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

Mr.  Cocke.  You  can  take  up  this  paper 
with  your  own  note  at  whatever  time  you 
may  choose  to  make  it  payable — three  months 
hence,  or  three  years  if  you  prefer." 

Chastain  Cocke  did  that  generous  thing. 
In  order  to  save  the  wife  and  daughters  of 
his  erring  friend  from  the  disgrace  which 
exposure  would  have  brought  upon  them, 
he  deliberately  executed  his  note  for  five 
thousand  dollars  which  he  did  not  owe,  and, 
upon  going  home,  cast  into  the  fire  the 
evidence  of  his  friend's  misconduct. 

But  this  was  not  destined  to  be  the  end 
of  the  matter.  A  little  later  my  uncle  was 
summoned  to  serve  upon  the  grand  jury  of 
his  county.  Under  Virginian  law  every  grand 
juryman  was  required  to  pledge  himself, 
under  oath,  to  report  to  the  grand  jury  any 
and  every  criminal  act  of  which  he  might 
have  had  cognizance  within  a  prescribed 
period.  This  note  forgery  came  within  the 
period  fixed  upon  by  the  statute,  and  if 
Chastain  Cocke  had  taken  the  oath  of  a 

200 


The    Virginian     Influence 

grand  juryman  he  must  have  reported  the 
facts.  This  he  was  in  no  wise  minded  to 
do,  so  he  asked  to  be  excused  from  grand 
jury  service.  The  court  declined  to  excuse 
him,  whereupon  he  said:  "Then  I  must 
respectfully  decline  to  serve." 

The  Judge  answered: 

"  But,  Mr.  Cocke,  you  have  no  option 
in  this  matter.  The  court  orders  you  to 
serve,  and  you  must." 

"  But  I  cannot,  if  the  court  please,  with 
out  violating  what  I  deem  to  be  an  obliga 
tion  of  sacred  honor,  and  surely  you  do  not 
wish  to  compel  me  to  do  that.  You  cannot 
compel  me,  indeed,  for  under  no  compulsion, 
no  matter  what  the  penalty  may  be,  will  I 
take  the  grand  juror's  oath  to-day." 

Feeling  that  it  would  not  do  to  excuse 
so  prominent  a  citizen  while  refusing  to 
excuse  others,  the  Judge  pleaded  earnestly 
with  him,  finally  asking  him  to  state  his 
reason  for  refusing  to  serve.  To  that  Mr. 
Cocke  replied  : 

201 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

"It  so  happens  that  I  know  of  a  felony 
committed  within  this  jurisdiction  within 
the  last  six  months.  I  alone  am  the  victim 
of  that  crime,  but  should  I  reveal  it  other 
and  altogether  innocent  people — women  and 
young  girls — must  suffer  cruel  and  lasting 
disgrace.  I  have  accepted  the  role  of  victim. 
I  have  made  a  sore  pecuniary  sacrifice  in 
order  to  conceal  the  facts  of  this  matter — 
facts  which  concern  nobody  on  earth  but 
myself — from  public  knowledge.  I  have 
destroyed  all  evidence  in  the  case.  I  cannot 
serve  on  this  grand  jury  without  swearing  to 
reveal  those  facts,  and  so,  with  the  profound- 
est  respect  for  the  court,  I  must  positively 
and  peremptorily  decline  to  serve." 

The  judge  was  terribly  troubled.  He 
walked  back  and  forth  upon  the  bench  in 
agonizing  distress  of  mind.  Finally  he 
turned  to  Mr.  Cocke  and  said : 

"My  duty  compels  me  to  insist  upon 
your  service.  If  you  refuse,  it  will  be  my 
duty  to  fine  you  to  the  full  extent  of  your 

202 


The     Virginian     Influence 

property,  and  to  imprison  you  until  such 
time  as  you  shall  yield.  Mr.  Cocke,  you 
simply  must  serve." 

To  this  my  uncle  answered  :  "It  grieves 
me  to  subject  your  honor  to  any  embarrass 
ment.  But  I  simply  cannot  serve  as  a  grand 
juryman  to-day,  and  I  will  not.  Your  honor 
knows  far  better  than  I  do,  for  I  am  not  a 
lawyer,  what  your  duty  is,  and  I  have  no 
doubt  that  you  will  discharge  it,  even  if  it 
strips  me  of  all  earthly  possessions  and  con 
demns  me  to  pass  the  remainder  of  my  days 
in  jail.  You,  sir,  are  too  much  a  man  of 
honor  not  to  understand  me  when  I  say  to 
you  that  in  my  judgment  I  cannot  serve  as  a 
grand  juror  to-day  without  making  such  a 
sacrifice  of  honor  as  would  be  impossible 
to  you,  and  is  equally  impossible  to  me. 
Finally,  and  once  for  all,  with  the  utmost 
respect  for  the  court,  I  positively  decline  to 
serve,  and  as  a  citizen  accustomed  to  submit 
to  the  law,  I  await  your  sentence." 

Again  the  judge  paced  backwards  and 

203 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

forwards  in  the  space  in  rear  of  the  bench. 
After  a  time  he  turned  to  the  clerk  and 
asked: 

"Mr.  Clerk,  what  is  Mr.  Cocke  worth, 
over  and  above  his  debts?" 

The  clerk  told  him.  Then  he  paced  his 
beat  again  for  a  time,  after  which  he  paused 
and  said : 

"Mr.  Cocke,  you  must." 

"Your  honor,  I  cannot,"  was  the  smiling 
answer  of  the  man  who,  for  the  sake  of  his 
honor,  stood  ready  to  forfeit  not  only  all 
his  earthly  possessions,  but  his  liberty  be 
sides. 

Then  suddenly  the  judge  turned  to  the 
clerk,  saying : 

"  Mr.  Clerk,  enter  it  as  the  judgment  of 
this  court  that  Mr.  Chastain  Cocke  shall 
pay  a  fine  of  one  dollar  and  be  imprisoned 
for  the  space  of  one  minute  in  the  county 
jail.  And,  Mr.  Clerk,  enter  upon  the  min 
utes  that  in  the  deliberate  judgment  of  this 
court,  I  am  not  fit  to  be  a  judge." 
204 


The       Virginian       Influence 

My  uncle  bowed  to  the  decision,  and 
moved  off  toward  the  sheriff  to  submit  him 
self  to  arrest.  But  the  u  body  of  the  county," 
represented  by  the  citizens  there  assembled, 
were  not  so  submissively  minded.  Chastain 
Cocke  was  their  senator  in  the  State  Legisla 
ture.  He  was  a  Whig,  and  both  the  county 
and  the  senatorial  district  were  strongly 
Democratic.  But  that  never  made  any  dif 
ference  when  Chastain  Cocke  announced 
himself  as  a  candidate  for  either  house  of  the 
Legislature.  He  was  always  elected  by  a 
majority  that  sent  party  divisions  out  of 
sight,  and  he  might  have  been  elected  to 
Congress  in  the  same  way,  had  he  seen  in 
Congress  any  opportunity  to  serve  his  con 
stituents  well. 

Court  day  always  brought  the  whole 
"body  of  the  county"  to  the  county  seat, 
and  when  it  was  noised  abroad  that  Chastain 
Cocke  was  in  controversy  with  the  court  all 
the  citizenry  that  could  gain  entrance  forced 
their  way  into  the  court  room.  When  sen- 

205 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

tence  was  pronounced,  they  all  precipitately 
left  the  building  and  assembled  on  the  green 
outside.  When  the  sheriff  came  out  with 
his  prisoner,  whom  he  was  commanded  to 
incarcerate  for  the  space  of  one  minute,  he 
found  his  way  toward  the  jail  obstructed  by 
a  mob  that  included  all  the  best  citizens  of 
the  county,  and  practically  all  other  able- 
bodied  dwellers  in  that  political  division. 

These  men  clamorously  insisted  that 
their  honored  fellow-citizen  should  not  be 
taken  to  the  jail.  In  the  enforcement  of 
their  prohibition  they  had  armed  themselves 
with  guns,  axes,  crowbars  and  whatever  else 
they  could  secure  in  the  way  of  offensive  or 
defensive  weapons. 

Seeing  the  situation,  my  uncle  asked  the 
sheriff  for  a  box  on  which  he  might  stand  to 
address  the  mob.  Securing  that  elevated 
position  he  made  an  impassioned  appeal  to 
the  populace.  He  begged  them  to  let  the 
law  take  its  course.  He  reminded  them 
that,  as  their  senator,  he  was  himself  a  law- 
206 


The    Virginian     Influence 

giver,  and  that  it  would  be  a  peculiar  shame 
to  him  if  the  law  should  be  defied  and  over 
ridden  in  his  behalf.  He  explained*to  them 
that  the  judge  was  absolutely  right,  except 
that  he  ought  to  have  imposed  a  severer 
penalty.  He  assured  them  that,  in  sub- 
mitting  to  the  prescribed  imprisonment  oi 
one  minute,  he  should  feel  no  humiliation  oi 
disgrace.  He  earnestly  begged  his  fellow- 
citizens  to  let  the  sheriff  carry  out  his  orders 
in  vindication  of  the  majesty  of  the  law. 

It  was  all  to  no  purpose.  The  people's 
mind  was  made  up.  No  sooner  had  he 
stepped  down  from  his  goods-box  platform 
than  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  honored 
men  of  that  community  mounted  it.  With 
his  thin  but  long  gray  locks  floating  in  the 
wind,  and  the  bare  top  of  his  head  exposed 
to  the  glaring  sun,  the  old  man  seemed  like 
an  angel  of  authority  as  he  lifted  his  spare 
and  tremulous  hand  to  command  silence. 
When  the  hush  came,  the  old  man,  with  his 
hand  still  raised  to  heaven,  said: 

207 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

"  Thou,  God,  seest  us!  Thou  only  can 
search  hearts  and  judge  them."  Then  turn 
ing  to  the  sea  of  uplifted  faces  all  about 
him,  he  said:  "Fellow  citizens: — Resolved, 
That  Chastain  Cocke  shall  never  be  im 
prisoned  for  one  second  in  any  jail  of  which 
this  community  is  the  owner.  Those  in  favor 
of  that  resolution  say  aye !  " 

It  was  needless,  but  he  added:  "If  any 
are  opposed  they  will  say  no  !" 

Then  turning  to  the  sheriff  he  said  : 

"  Mr.  Sheriff,  you  have  heard  the  unani 
mous  verdict  of  this  community.  That  ver 
dict,  as  you  very  well  know,  is  final  and 
irrevocable." 

There  was  nothing  for  the  sheriff  to  do 
but  return  to  the  court  and  report  that  he 
had  been  prevented  "by  force  of  arms" 
from  executing  the  decree  of  imprisonment. 
Thereupon  the  judge  said  : 

"The  court  regards  the  detention  of 
the  prisoner  for  several  minutes  in  the  cus 
tody  of  the  sheriff  as  the  full  equivalent  of 

20S 


The     Virginian     Influence 

the  imprisonment  ordered.     Mr.  Clerk,  call 
the  cases  on  the  calendar." 

These  incidents  are  related  here  in  de 
tail  in  order  to  show  under  what  influences 
Edward  Eggleston  fell  at  this  peculiarly 
receptive  period  of  his  life.  Mr.  Chastain 
Cocke  was  exceptional  in  his  ability  and  in 
the  courage  with  which  he  confronted  duty ; 
but  his  principles,  his  theories  of  conduct, 
were  only  such  as  all  the  better  class  of  men 
in  that  community  at  that  time  accepted  and 
acted  upon.  Our  father's  brother  at  the  old 
homestead,  and  our  cousin  who  represented 
another  branch  of  the  family  at  Egglestetton, 
obeyed  the  same  law  of  honorable  obligation 
quite  as  unquestioningly  as  he  did.  So  did 
all  the  better  men  of  Virginia  with  whom 
Edward  was  at  this  time  brought  into  close 
relations,  and  the  influence  of  such  men  upon 

*I  have  already  made  use  of  this  incident  in  a  novel,  transferring  it  to 
another  time  and  calling  the  actors  in  it  by  fictitious  names.  But  surely,  is 
more  than  half  a  century  has  passed  since  the  occurrence,  and  after  everybody 
concerned  in  it  has  passed  away,  there  can  be  no  reason  why  I  should  not  tell 
the  story  in  iti  nakedness  without  disguise  or  concealment,  except  such  as  is 
involved  in  the  suppression  of  the  offender's  name. — AUTHOR. 

209 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

his  character  and  his  point  of  view,  was  un- 
tellably  important  as  a  formative  influence. 

In  his  earlier  boyhood  the  only  appeal 
made  to  him  had  been  to  a  sense  of  religious 
obligation  to  act  for  the  safety  of  his  own 
soul.  He  was  now  taught  that  there  were 
obligations  altogether  independent  of  reli 
gious  duty,  obligations  of  mere  manhood  and 
self-respect,  that  must  be  fulfilled  even  if  it 
should  be  demonstrated  that  there  was  no 
God  in  the  Universe,  no  judgment  day,  and 
no  future  life  of  rewards  and  punishments. 
Here  was  a  new  thought  and  a  mightily 
uplifting  one — the  thought,  namely,  that 
every  man  owes  it  to  himself  to  maintain 
a  certain  standard  of  conduct,  quite  irrespec 
tive  of  his  responsibility  to  the  Deity  or  to 
any  other  tribunal  than  that  of  self-respect 
and  conscience  and  honor.  Not  in  fear  of 
punishment,  not  in  dread  of  a  day  of  judg 
ment,  not  upon  any  selfish  or  cowardly 
account,  but  solely  as  a  matter  of  self-respect, 
of  soul-cleanliness,  one  must  meet  his  obliga- 

210 


The     Virginian     Influence 

tions  unflinchingly  and  discharge  them  in 
utter  disregard  of  cost  or  of  personal 
consequences  of  any  kind.  That  was  the 
new  gospel  that  Edward  learned  in  Virginia, 
and,  as  he  afterwards  said,  no  boy  ever  stood 
more  pressingly  in  need  of  such  a  lesson  for 
the  correction  of  the  false  and  futile  teach 
ings  of  his  earlier  life. 

Under  the  former  teaching  no  man  was 
expected  to  be  scrupulous  in  the  performance 
of  duty  unless  he  "professed  religion"  and 
held  himself  subject  to  the  requirements  of  a 
formulated  creed.  Under  the  new  teaching 
Edward  learned  that  conduct — which  Mat 
thew  Arnold  truly  says  is  "two-thirds  of 
life" — is  wholly  independent  of  religious 
belief  and  that  obligation  rests  upon  a  sense 
of  right  and  wrong  altogether  apart  from 
any  theological  belief  or  any  scheme  of 
rewards  and  punishments. 

Still  another  influence  to  which  Edward 
Eggleston  was  subjected  at  this  time  was 
that  of  Mr.  William  H.  Harrison,  school- 
211 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

master  at  the  Wigwam.  This  was  for  more 
than  a  generation  a  noted  boarding-school 
for  boys,  as  wholesome  in  its  influences  as 
the  Gunnery  in  Connecticut  was.  The  mas 
ter  of  it  was  a  man  of  great  ability,  great 
learning  and  a  character  as  white  and  clean 
as  that  of  any  child.  Edward  quickly  learned 
to  love  Mr.  Harrison,  and  Mr.  Harrison 
quickly  learned  to  love  Edward.  The  two 
not  only  worked  together  in  the  orderly 
course  of  school  employments,  but  they  came 
presently  to  think  together,  to  discuss  to 
gether  those  larger  questions  of  life  and  con 
duct  which  lie  beyond  and  above  school  work. 
The  half  year  that  Edward  spent  under 
Mr.  Harrison's  tuition  was  the  last  of  his 
school  life.  Fie  had  made  himself  master  of 
Latin,  French  and  mathematics  as  few  col 
lege  graduates  of  that  time  ever  did,  and 
he  had  laid  a  secure  foundation  in  Greek, 
upon  which  he  afterwards  built,  after  his 
custom,  by  a  course  of  self-directed  study. 
Up  to  this  time  he  had  owed  comparatively 

212 


The     Virginian     Influence 

little  to  schoolmasters.  He  never  after 
wards  increased  that  debt. 

One  other  thing.  In  the  old  Virginia 
houses  which  were  his  homes  at  this  time, 
there  were  always  well-stocked  libraries. 
These  included  next  to  nothing  of  strictly 
modern  literature,  but  they  were  rich  in  all 
the  classics  of  our  language,  and  Edward 
diligently  read  them  through,  as  I  did  in  my 
turn  a  little  later.  It  used  to  be  said  of  him 
afterwards  that  he  could  never  be  tempted 
to  change  his  quarters  and  pay  a  prolonged 
visit  in  any  house  until  he  had  read  clear 
through  the  library  of  the  house  he  was  in. 

I  think  the  glamour  of  that  easy-going, 
restful  and  exquisitely  self-poised  Virginian 
life  did  not  appeal  to  Edward  at  all  so 
strongly  as  it  did  to  me  when  a  year  or  two 
later  I  was  brought  into  contact  with  it.  To 
me  it  was  the  complete  realization  of  romance, 
the  actual  embodiment  of  poetry,  a  dream 
life  of  exquisite  perfection.  It  was  a  hun 
dred  years  behind  the  times,  but  for  that 

213 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

very  reason  it  fascinated  my  mind  as  nothing 
else  has  done,  before  or  since.  It  violated 
all  the  maxims  of  prudence  that  had  lain  at 
the  basis  of  my  education,  but  I  was  over 
joyed  to  be  rid  of  allegiance  to  these.  It 
ran  counter  to  all  I  had  learned  of  strenuous- 
ness,  but  I  was  weary  of  strenuousness, 
and  I  welcomed  the  restfulness  of  this 
dreamy  life  of  perfect  peace.  It  was  not  so 
with  Edward.  He  believed,  with  intense 
sincerity,  in  a  life  of  endeavor,  of  action,  of 
absolute  earnestness.  The  idleness  of  the 
Virginian  life  was  grateful  enough  to  him  as 
a  sort  of  vacation,  but  as  a  life  to  be  led  in 
definitely  it  offended  his  sense  of  human 
obligation,  and  he  could  in  no  wise  reconcile 
himself  to  it  as  a  permanent  mode  of  exist 
ence. 

More  important  still,  that  life  was 
founded  upon  slavery,  and  Edward's  mind 
revolted  against  slavery  with  an  antagonism 
that  nothing  could  overcome  or  weaken. 

In  Virginia,  of  course,  he  saw  the  insti- 

214 


The    Virg'inian     Influence 

tution  in  its  least  offensive  and  most  pleasing 
aspect.  Slavery  there  was  almost  purely 
patriarchal  in  its  character.  The  relatives  and 
friends  with  whom  he  associated  had  inherited 
their  servants — for. they  never  spoke  of  them 
as  slaves — precisely  as  they  had  inherited  their 
acres  and  their  family  traditions  and  their 
family  debts,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  They 
treated  the  relation  of  master  and  servant 
as  one  of  mutual  obligation.  They  strongly 
felt  their  responsibility  for  the  welfare  of 
their  black  dependents.  They  never  thought 
of  buying  or  selling  negroes.  It  was  not 
even  respectable  to  do  so,  except  in  the  case 
of  a  criminal  negro,  who  must  either  be 
u  sold  off  south  "  or  sent  to  the  State  prison. 
The  negroes  in  Virginia  at  that  time  were, 
without  question,  better  compensated  for 
their  labor  than  any  other  laboring  class  has 
ever  been  anywhere  on  earth.  Not  only  were 
they  the  best  housed,  the  best  clothed  and 
the  best  fed  of  laborers,  but  they  were  secure 
of  tender  care  in  infancy,  in  illness  and  in 
215 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

old  age,  as    no    other  laboring  people  ever 
were  before  or  since. 

Thus  slavery  presented  its  most  attrac 
tive  side  to  the  Hoosier  boy's  mind.  But  it 
was  slavery,  nevertheless,  and  he  would  none 
of  it.  Instead  of  being  won  by  its  pleasing 
patriarchal  presentment,  he  was  repelled 
actively  where  before  his  sentiment  of  hostil 
ity  to  the  institution  had  been  mainly  senti 
mental  and  passive. 

Edward  was  not  a  fanatic  on  this  sub 
ject,  though  he  felt  strongly  concerning  it. 
He  did  not  make  himself  offensive  in  dis 
cussing  the  matter,  as  so  many  people  at  that 
time  thought  it  their  duty  to  do.  He  did 
not  thrust  his  opinions  upon  those  about 
him,  but  he  stoutly  held  and  did  not  conceal 
them. 

In  all  this  he  found  much  of  sympathy  in 
Virginia.  The  better  class  of  Virginians  of 
that  time  lamented  slavery  as  an  inherited 
curse  of  which  they  would  gladly  have  rid 
themselves  if  they  had  known  how.  They 

216 


The       Virginian       Influence 

felt,  as  Thomas  Jefferson  had  felt,  a  strong 
desire  to  set  the  negroes  free;  but  they  saw, 
as  he  did,  that  it  would  not  do  to  "arm 
these  people  with  freedom  and  a  dagger;" 
that  to  set  them  free  without  providing  them 
with  some  means  of  earning  a  living,  would 
be  to  inflict  a  curse  upon  them  and  to  set 
society  on  its  head,  as  it  were.  It  was  in 
fear  of  this  that  Virginian  law  forbade  the 
freeing  of  negro  slaves  within  the  State.  So 
many  of  the  Virginians  of  that  time  were 
soul-weary  of  the  institution  that  but  for 
such  laws  a  considerable  proportion  of  the 
negroes  would  have  been  set  free  by  act  of 
their  owners,  or  by  provisions  like  those  that 
John  Randolph  had  written  into  his  will.  In 
the  past  many  Virginians  had  done  this  by 
way  of  freeing  themselves  and  their  children 
from  the  incubus  of  slavery.  Conspicuous 
among  these  had  been  Virginia's  great  chan 
cellor,  George  Wythe,  who,  inheriting  a  large 
estate,  actually  impoverished  himself  in  set 
ting  free  the  negroes  that  had  come  to  him 

217 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

from  his  fathers,  and  in  providing  them  with 
the  means  of  earning  a  livelihood.  Many 
scores  of  other  Virginians  had  taken  their 
negroes  to  the  West  and  settled  them  on 
little  farms  there,  at  cost  of  impoverishment 
to  themselves.  John  Letcher,  the  governor 
of  Virginia  during  the  Civil  War,  had  for 
years  openly  advocated  the  abolition  of 
slavery,  not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  the 
negroes  as  for  the  salvation  of  the  young 
white  men  of  Virginia  from  influences  which 
he  regarded  as  evil.  Despairing  of  general 
emancipation,  he  proposed  and  stoutly  advo 
cated  the  division  of  the  State,  and  the  erec 
tion  of  its  western  half  into  a  free  State. 
His  abolitionism  was  the  chief  factor  in 
making  him  governor. 

The  desire  for  emancipation  at  the  time 
of  Edward's  stay  in  Virginia,  was  very  gen 
eral.  But  there  were  insuperable  obstacles 
in  the  way  of  the  realization  of  that  desire. 
The  planter  who  wished  to  free  his  slaves 
must  take  them  beyond  the  borders  of  the 

218 


The     Virginian     Influence 

State  and  there  provide  them  with  little  farms. 
In  the  greater  number  of  cases  this  was 
impossible.  There  was  an  hereditary  debt 
upon  almost  every  plantation,  and  the  land, 
without  the  negroes,  would  not  sell  for 
enough  to  cover  that  debt  and  pay  the  ex 
pense  of  the  deportation  of  the  blacks. 

It  was  a  time  of  relentless  anti-slavery 
agitation  at  the  north,  and  the  southern 
people,  including  those  who  most  earnestly 
desired  emancipation,  bitterly  resented  what 
they  believed  to  be  an  unjust  and  unwar 
ranted  interference  with  their  domestic  affairs 
on  the  part  of  people  not  concerned  with 
them.  They  looked  upon  such  agitation  as 
an  impertinence  that  gravely  threatened  their 
wives  and  children  with  all  the  horrors  of  a 
servile  war.  But  for  a  rational,  intellectual 
and  moral  condemnation  of  the  system,  such 
as  Edward  Eggleston  freely  avowed,  they 
had  no  resentment  and  no  word  of  censure. 
It  commanded  their  sympathy  rather  than 
their  hostility. 

219 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

But  it  forbade  Edward  to  avail  himself 
of  an  opportunity.  Our  childless  uncle 
wished  to  adopt  him  and  educate  him,  first 
at  the  University  of  Virginia,  and  afterwards 
at  one  of  the  great  German  seats  of  learn 
ing.  But  eager  as  the  boy  was  for  pre 
cisely  such  educational  opportunities,  his 
conscience  impelled  him  to  decline  the  offer, 
on  the  ground  that  it  would  make  of  him 
the  beneficiary  of  slave  labor,  a  sharer  in 
the  profits  of  a  system  which  he  regarded  as 
morally  wrong. 

Having  come  to  this  decision,  the  boy 
felt  himself  bound  to  return  to  his  native 
State,  Indiana,  and  he  did  so,  thus  making  a 
final  end  of  his  schooling,  which  might  other 
wise  have  included  a  course  at  the  Univer 
sity  of  Virginia  and  some  years  of  study  at 
Heidelberg  or  Jena. 


220 


CHAPTER  XI. 

Some   Revelations   of   Character. 


D 


URING  Edward's  stay  in  Virginia 
the  family  was  removed  again  to 
Madison,  chiefly  because  I  had 
been  sent  there  so  that  I  might 
attend  the  High  School — the  Vevay  schools 
offering  no  further  opportunities  for  me, 
now  that  Mrs.  Dumont  was  compelled  by  in 
creasing  years  and  by  ill  health  to  give  up 
teaching. 

I  remember  an  occurrence  soon  after 
Edward's  return  from  Virginia,  which  illus 
trates  his  self-sacrificing  character,  and  which 
is,  therefore,  worth  relating.  I  had  always 
been  a  notable  swimmer,  and  to  me  swim 
ming  seemed  scarcely  more  difficult  as  an  art 
than  walking.  One  evening  Edward  and  I 
went  to  the  river  for  a  bath.  We  pushed 
out  from  shore  and  continued  on  our  course 
221 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

till  we  neared  the  middle  of  the  river.     Then 
suddenly  Edward  said  to  me  : 

"Geordie,  I'm  exhausted.  I  must  sink 
here  and  drown.  Don't  try  to  save  me. 
That  would  only  involve  you,  too,  in  my 
drowning.  Leave  me  here  and  swim  ashore 
if  you  have  strength." 

I  do  not  think  I  ever  knew  anything 
more  heroic  than  that,  though  afterwards  I 
had  an  experience  of  four  years  of  strenuous 
war,  abounding  in  heroic  deeds.  I  was  im 
pressed  by  his  calm  courage,  and  touched 
by  his  impulse  of  self-sacrifice.  But  I 
laughed  aloud  at  the  foolishness  of  his  pro 
posal.  I  had  swum  five  times  across  that 
river  without  touching  bottom,  and  I  could 
have  swum  ten  times  or  twenty  times  across 
it  with  scarcely  an  effort.  The  little  space 
of  a  quarter  mile  or  so  that  lay  between  us 
and  the  shore  seemed  to  me  ridiculously  of 
no  consequence.  Laughing  and  jeering  for 
my  brother's  encouragement,  I  commanded 
him  to  place  his  hands  on  my  shoulders,  and 
222 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

he  did  so,  all  unwillingly,  lest  he  imperil  my 
life  by  what  he  deemed  an  overtaxing  of  my 
strength.  I  swam  ashore  with  him  as  easily 
as  I  might  have  walked  a  block  and  laid  him 
on  the  sands  to  rest  and  recover  his  breath. 
When  that  was  done  I  asked  him: 

"What  sort  of  a  brother  do  you  take 
me  for,  anyhow?  Did  you  seriously  think  I 
would  leave  you  to  drown  out  there  in  the 
river,  and  make  no  effort  to  save  you?" 

I  saw  that  he  was  weeping,  so  I  said  no 
more  in  my  bantering  way.  Presently  he 
recovered  himself  and  said  to  me,  taking  my 
hand  : 

"  Geordie,  it  was  God  who  taught  you 
how  to  swim  like  that." 

My  theology  has  always  been  badly 
crippled,  but  in  that  moment  I  rejoiced  that 
God  or  long  practice  had  given  me  a  skill  in 
swimming  sufficient  to  save  my  brother's 
life. 

It  was  soon  after  this  that  Edward  organ 
ized  a  little  club  of  us  boys,  called  the  u  XII," 
223 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

for  the  reason  that  it  was  our  purpose  to 
limit  the  membership  to  twelve  persons. 
Edward  had  been  reading  the  autobiography 
of  Benjamin  Franklin,  and  in  the  formation 
of  our  club  he  had  had  the  Junta  in  mind. 

The  club  never  reached  its  membership 
limit  in  our  time,  at  least,  though  I  believe  it 
still  exists,  with  somewhat  changed  purposes 
and  a  much  larger  membership  than  that  at 
first  contemplated.  It  was  a  secret  society, 
and  like  most  other  associations  of  the  kind, 
its  secrets  were  few  and  of  no  consequence. 
It  had  its  passwords  and  its  hailing  signs, 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  semi-masonic  equip 
ment.  For  curiosity's  sake,  I  practiced  the 
old  hailing  signs  in  the  streets  of  Madison  in 
1900,  and  received  ready  responses  from  the 
younger  generation  of  XII's  who  still  pre 
serve  the  organization. 

Our  meeting  place  when  the  little  society 
was  formed,  was  Edward's  room  and  mine, 
in  East  Street.  The  purpose  of  the  society 
was  self-improvement  by  debate,  essay 

224 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

writing,  the  systematic  reading  of  books,  and 
especially  conversation.  As  an  illustration 
of  the  prejudice  of  that  time  I  may  relate 
that  after  a  hot  debate  we  refused  to  admit 
one  boy  to  the  club  solely  because  he  was  a 
Roman  Catholic  in  religion.  Obviously  our 
narrow-mindedness  needed  all  of  enlighten 
ment  that  we  sought  in  organizing  the  XII. 
Half  a  century  later  Edward  remembered 
this  incident  with  regret  and  humiliation. 
"  What  a  lot  of  young  bigots  we  were,"  he 
said  to  me  one  day  at  Lake  George,  "when 
we  voted  to  exclude  George  Griffin  on 
account  of  his  religion !  We've  all  outgrown 
that  since,  but  I  can't  forget  that  we  were 
once  capable  of  such  prejudice."  Then, 
after  a  pause,  he  added  : 

"We  ought,  all  of  us,  to  be  immortal, 
Geordie;  we  shall  need  an  eternity  in  which 
to  repent  of  our  errors." 

About  this  time  there  arose  the  question 
of  my  education  beyond  what  the  schools  of 
Madison  could  give  me.  Our  mother,  out 
225 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

of  her  scant  possessions,  had  many  years 
before  contributed  one  hundred  dollars  to 
the  endowment  of  the  Indiana  Asbury  Uni 
versity,  at  Greencastle,  and  had  become  pos 
sessed,  in  return,  of  a  perpetual  scholarship 
in  that  institution.  This  scholarship  entitled 
her  to  send  one  student  to  the  University 
free  of  all  charge  for  tuition.  I  had  gone  as 
far  as  the  High  School  in  Madison  could 
take  me  in  the  direction  of  a  liberal  educa 
tion.  But  then,  as  now,  the  High  School 
course  was  completely  out  of  accord  with 
college  requirements.  In  mathematics  I  was 
fully  equipped  to  enter  the  Junior  class  at 
college.  In  certain  other  studies,  notably 
chemistry  and  physics,  I  was  fit  to  pass  the 
Senior  examination  for  graduation.  But  I 
knew  almost  no  Latin  and  no  Greek.  The 
Greek  did  not  so  greatly  matter,  as  the  col 
leges  at  that  time  were  accustomed  to  regard 
that  language  as  a  "  lame  duck,"  to  be  brought 
up  after  entrance.  But  I  must  know  enough 
of  Latin  to  read  at  sight,  to  conjugate  the 
226 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

principal  verbs,  to  decline  the  nouns  and 
adjectives,  and  to  convert  simple  English 
sentences  into  correct  Latin. 

A  sudden  ambition  had  seized  me  to 
ugo  to  college,"  as  the  phrase  went.  Indeed 
there  was  nowhere  else  for  me  to  go,  there 
being  no  school  in  Madison  which  offered 
any  advance  upon  the  curriculum  that  I  had 
mastered.  But  I  was  wholly  unprepared,  so 
far  as  the  Latin  requirement  was  concerned, 
and  the  case  seemed  hopeless — to  everybody 
except  Edward.  He  had  used  himself  to 
the  performance  of  astonishing  things  in 
the  way  of  study,  and  he  was  in  no  way 
appalled  by  the  false  magnitude  given  by  the 
curriculums  to  requirements  of  study.  He 
had  often  himself  done  in  a  week  or  two 
what  the  schools  set  down  as  a  year's  work, 
and  he  saw  no  reason  why  I  should  not  do 
the  same,  particularly  as  my  gift  of  quick 
acquisition  was  marked,  while  my  memory 
was  positively  phenomenal  in  its  readiness 
and  its  tenacity.  Indeed  the  ease  with  which 
227 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

I  learned  whatever  I  was  set  to  learn,  had  up 
to  this  time  been  the  chief  obstacle  in  the 
way  of  my  education.  I  had  never  in  my  life 
studied  diligently,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
I  had  never  found  it  necessary  to  do  so  in 
order  to  keep  up  with  my  classes.  Edward 
knew  this,  and  he  reckoned  with  it  as  the 
chief  factor  in  the  situation.  He  went  to 
our  mother  with  the  proposal  that  I  should 
enter  college  at  the  beginning  of  the  term — 
two  or  three  weeks  away.  Our  mother 
pointed  out  my  lack  of  instruction  in  Latin. 

"I  know  all  that,"  Edward  said.  "  But 
I'll  take  care  of  that.  If  you  consent  to  his 
going  to  college,  I  will  undertake  to  prepare 
him  for  his  examinations." 

Edward  was  at  that  time  not  yet  eighteen 
years  of  age,  but  the  maturity  of  his  wisdom 
was  such  that  everybody  about  him  looked 
up  to  him  as  to  a  counsellor  whose  words 
were  weighty  far  beyond  those  of  any  other. 
I  think  our  mother  hearkened  to  them  with 
quite  all  the  submissiveness  that  she  had  ever 
228 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

shown  to  the  injunctions  of  our  father,  whom 
she  had  revered  with  the  utmost  devotion 
that  a  loving  wife  can  feel. 

Having  gained  our  mother's  consent, 
Edward  came  to  me. 

"Now,  Geordie,"  he  said,  "you  have 
never  studied  in  your  life.  You  have  always 
stood  at  the  head  of  your  classes  when  you 
chose  to  do  so,  but  usually  you  haven't  cared 
for  that.  Now,  for  the  first  time  in  your  life, 
you  are  going  to  work  in  earnest.  You  are 
going  to  learn  in  two  weeks  all  the  Latin  that 
the  schools  teach  in  two  years.  You  can  do 
it,  and  I  am  going  to  make  you  do  it.  You 
shall  enter  college  with  flying  colors,  but  in 
order  to  do  so  you've  got  to  work  in  a  way 
that  you  never  did  before." 

I  was  eager  for  this  thing,  and  I  wel 
comed  the  work.  Our  breakfast  was  served 
at  eight  o'clock.  At  six  every  morning  Ed 
ward  waked  me.  He  allowed  me  precisely 
twenty  minutes  for  a  cold  bath  and  for 
dressing.  That  left  one  hour  and  forty  min- 

229 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

utes  for  paradigms,  and  not  until  I  could 
recite  them  perfectly  did  he  allow  me  to  go 
to  breakfast.  After  the  morning  meal  he 
allowed  me  half  an  hour  for  exercise — which 
consisted  of  sawing  and  splitting  wood  and 
milking  the  cow.  Then  he  held  me  to  my 
Latin  again  until  the  noon-day  meal.  And 
after  dinner  he  made  me  "  buckle  down  to 
study,"  as  he  phrased  it,  until  supper  time. 
After  supper  he  permitted  me  to  go  swim 
ming,  but  at  eight  o'clock  he  had  me  at  work 
again  over  my  Latin,  and  he  kept  me  at  it 
until  eleven.  Then  I  went  to  bed  and  to 
sleep. 

Eight  days  of  this  accomplished  the 
purpose.  At  the  end  of  that  time  I  knew 
all  the  principal  paradigms,  could  read 
any  ordinary  Latin  at  sight,  and  could  trans 
late  any  simple  English  sentence  into  fairly 
correct  Latin. 

Then  Edward  called  a  halt.  There  were 
still  seven  days  ahead  of  me  before  I  must 
offer  myself  for  my  entrance  examinations. 

230 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 


But,  wise  teacher  that  he  was,  Edward  decreed 
that  these  seven  days  should  be  given  to  rest 
and  recreation.  "The  only  thing  that  I'm 
afraid  of,"  he  said,  "is  that  your  nerves  may 
play  you  a  trick  after  this  debauch  of  study. 
So  you  and  I  are  going  to  spend  the  next 
seven  days  in  the  woods  out  yonder  on  the 
hills.  You  aren't  even  to  think  of  Latin 
until  the  time  of  your  examination  arrives." 

Then  we  went  away  to  the  hills,  and  for 
a  week  we  gathered  trilobites  and  otherwise 
interested  ourselves  in  that  study  of  geology 
which  some  of  the  preachers  of  that  ignor 
ant  time  tried  in  vain  to  forbid  to  us  as  a 
"Godless  science." 

The  region  around  Madison  was  geo 
logically  rich  in  an  extreme  degree,  and 
thanks  to  the  stupidity  of  engineering  at  the 
time  when  our  railroad  was  built,  the  hills  in 
rear  of  us  had  been  cut  through  with  a 
great  gash  a  hundred  and  fifty  or  two 
hundred  feet  deep,  where  now  a  tunnel 
would  take  the  place  of  the  cut.  The 

231 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

geological  formation  tempted  us,  and  both 
Edward  and  I  were  sufficiently  self-in 
structed  in  geology  to  take  advantage  of 
our  opportunities.  Edward  had  read  to 
me  "The  Old  Red  Sandstone"  and  u The 
Testimony  of  the  Rocks  "  and  the  "  Vestiges 
of  Creation,"  and  together  we  had  studied 
the  best  of  the  school  geologies  of  that 
time.  Better  still — though  we  did  not  then 
know  how  much  better  it  was — we  had 
passed  many  months  of  delightful  days 
among  our  native  hills,  trying  to  find  out  for 
ourselves  what  nature  had  written  in  the 
rocks  and  trees  and  plant  life  for  our  instruc 
tion  as  to  the  purposes  and  methods  of  crea 
tion.  We  had  questioned  God  as  to  his 
ordering  of  the  Universe,  reverently  seeking 
an  answer,  but  in  doing  so  we  had  offended 
against  the  theological  Zeitgeist.  Then,  as 
now,  then  as  always  since  ever  the  founda 
tions  of  the  world  were  laid,  theology  claimed 
for  itself  a  close  monopoly  of  truth.  It 
held  facts  to  be  heretical  in  so  far  as  they 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

might  seem  to  contradict  dogmas.  It  sought 
to  set  limits  to  human  inquiry  and  to  impose 
restraints  upon  thought. 

To  me  these  things  made  little  differ 
ence.  I  was  born  a  skeptic,  a  doubter,  an 
inquirer.  There  was  a  hole  in  my  head,  I 
think,  at  that  point  where  the  phrenologists 
locate  the  bump  of  veneration.  I  had  been 
born  with  an  eager  desire  to  know,  and  in 
the  gratification  of  that  desire  I  had  never 
in  the  least  cared  whether  a  fact  found  out 
squared  itself  with  any  theory  or  flatly  con 
tradicted  it.  My  attitude  of  mind,  though 
I  did  not  then  knowr  it,  was  purely  scientific. 

Not  so  Edward's.  He  was  still  under 
strong  bonds  to  theology,  and  in  his  modesty 
of  mind  he  had  not  yet  realized  his  own  in 
tellectual  superiority  to  those  half  educated 
"pastors  and  masters"  who  sought  at  this 
time  to  bind  his  soul  with  shackles. 

A  strenuous  effort  was  made  by  those 
pastors  and  masters  to  stop  Edward  and  me 
from  the  study  of  geology.  The  only  effect 

233 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

of  this  upon  me  was  to  stimulate  further 
and  more  fearless  study.  "The  preachers," 
I  said  to  Edward,  "are  afraid  of  science. 
Why?  Isn't  it  because  the  facts  contradict 
their  teachings  and  their  theories  ?  I  confess 
I  don't  know,  but  I  am  going  to  find  out  if 
I  can." 

Then  Edward  underwent  a  period  of 
sore  wrestling  over  his  obligations  toward 
my  soul,  which  entity,  if  it  exists,  I  gravely 
fear  was  never  worthy  of  his  concern  for  its 
welfare.  After  thinking  the  matter  out,  he 
came  to  me  one  day  and  said  something  like 
this : 

"  After  all,  we  know  that  God  calls  these 
men  to  preach  ;  presumably  he  inspires  them 
with  impulses  of  what  to  preach.  We  are 
mere  boys.  Have  we  a  right  to  think  for 
ourselves  in  opposition  to  what  these  divinely 
commissioned  teachers  tell  us  is  the  truth?" 

For  answer  I  said: 

"Are  they— all  of  them— called  to 
preach?  Are  they — all  of  them — divinely 

231 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

inspired  as  to  their  teaching?  I  saw  one  of 
them  at  camp  meeting,  the  other  day,  fall 
into  a  foolish  passion  because  the  points  of 
his  only  standing  collar  didn't  coincide  on 
the  two  sides  of  his  mouth.  He  had  been 
appointed  to  preach  that  afternoon  and  he 
had  his  sermon  ready,  but  he  gave  it  up  and 
lied  about  it,  saying  he  was  ill,  and  let  some 
body  else  preach  in  his  stead,  simply  because 
he  couldn't  get  that  collar  right.  Was  that 
man  God-commissioned  to  preach?  Or  was 
he  collar-commissioned  not  to  do  so,  because 
there  was  a  girl  out  there  in  the  audience 
whom  he  wanted  to  marry?" 

Edward  wras  at  this  time  reading  Theo 
dore  Parker  and  William  Ellery  Channing  and 
Emerson,  and  his  mind  was  opening  in  a  way 
that  sadly  distressed  the  ministers  who  were 
watching  his  development  with  a  foreshadow 
ing  that  its  course  did  not  tend  to  orthodoxy 
and  that  this  gifted  boy  was  destined  to  be 
come  a  power  in  the  world — perhaps  a 
power  dangerous  to  their  dominance. 

235 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

During  his  sojourn  in  Virginia  Edward 
had  been  brought  for  a  time  into  intimate 
personal  relations  with  Dr.  Josiah  Clark 
Nott,  the  author  of  "Types  of  Mankind," 
"Indigenous  Races  of  the  Earth,"  and  other 
learned  works  in  Ethnology.  The  strangely 
old  boy  of  17  or  18,  and  the  strangely  young 
thinker  of  fifty  odd,  had  become  inseparable 
companions,  and  Edwrard  had  learned  from 
Dr.  Nott  the  primary  lesson  of  science — 
absolute  fearlessness  of  thought  and  inquiry. 
These  two — the  man  sorely  stricken  in  health 
and  feeble  far  beyond  his  years,  and  the 
eager-minded  boy — spent  days  and  nights 
together,  often  sitting  up  in  converse  until 
morning  broke  upon  them.  From  that  asso 
ciation  Edward  had  brought  away  much  of 
the  scientific  spirit,  and  he  now  haltingly  and 
timidly  applied  it  as  he  and  I  wandered  over 
the  hills  about  Madison,  and  studied  nature 
at  first  hand  in  that  wonderful  railroad  cut 
— of  which  I  do  not  know  the  like  for  geo 
logical  opportunity  anywhere. 
236 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

I  shall  never  forget  a  seance  that  my 
brother  and  I  had  about  that  time  with  the 
Presiding  Elder  of  our  district.  The  good 
old  man  was  sorely  troubled  about  us,  and 
especially  about  our  geological  studies.  He 
explained  to  us  that  geology  was  a  science 
which  "  sought  to  leave  God  out  of  the 
story  of  creation,"  and  when  Edward  ven 
tured  to  suggest  that  Bishop  Upshur's  chron 
ology  was  not  inspired,  and  might  possibly 
be  wrong,  the  dear,  devout  old  gentleman 
met  the  plea  with  a  proposal  of  "earnest 
prayer  for  the  salvation  of  a  young  soul  from 
the  labyrinth  of  pseudo-scientific  doubt."  I 
remember  his  phrase  all  the  more  accurately 
for  the  reason  that  at  the  time  I  had  only 
the  vaguest  possible  notion  of  what  it  meant, 
and  also  because  he  did  not  include  my  soul 
as  an  entity  worth  praying  for.  The  old  gen 
tleman  prayed  over  Edward  very  earnestly, 
and  he  tearfully  urged  us  to  give  up  our 
pursuit  of  what  he  called  "  that  godless  and 
infidel  science." 

237 


The    First     of    The     Hoosiers 

For  three  days  our  little  geological 
hammers  remained  idle.  Then  we  visited 
McCormack  and  got  new  light. 

McCormack  was  a  somewhat  out-of-the- 
way  personage,  who  dwelt  in  Madison  and 
had  a  singularly  miscellaneous  workshop  and 
laboratory  there.  He  bore  the  reputation  of 
being  half-crazy — a  reputation  chiefly  based, 
I  now  think,  upon  the  fact  that  he  knew  more 
and  thought  more  freely  and  more  daringly 
than  it  was  at  that  time  permitted  to  men  to 
know  and  to  think.  He  was  an  inventor.  He 
had  constructed  a  device  of  air-pumps  and 
the  like,  that  enabled  him  to  walk  upon  ceil 
ings,  and  he  had  gone  all  the  way  round  the 
world  giving  exhibitions  of  ceiling-walking. 
He  had  brought  back  with  him  enough 
money  to  satisfy  all  his  needs,  and  he  was 
now  devoting  himself  to  scientific  and 
mechanical  research.  Edward  and  I  were 
accustomed  to  spend  many  hours  in  this 
queerly  constituted  person's  workshop,  some 
times  helping  him  in  his  work,  sometimes 

238 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

doing  work  of  our  own  there — which  we 
were  always  welcome  to  do — and  some 
times  merely  listening  to  McCormack's  talk. 
Among  other  things  he  had  a  complete 
series  of  Indiana  rock  specimens,  each  care 
fully  dressed  in  such  fashion  as  best  to  show 
its  formation  and  structure.  "  I  think  God 
made  these  rocks,"  he  said  to  us  one  day. 
"  Some  people  don't  seem  to  think  so.  Any 
how,  it  can  do  you  boys  no  harm  to  find  out 
how  they  were  made." 

Then  we  got  out  our  hammers  and 
went  geologizing  again,  and  one  day,  as  we 
stood  together  in  the  Great  Rock  railroad 
cut,  Edward  said : 

"  Geordie,  I  can't  help  thinking  we  do 
right  to  study  this.  Anyhow,  the  rocks 
haven't  any  interest  to  tell  us  lies." 

"And  they  make  no  mistakes,"  I  an 
swered. 

"No;  but  we  may  make  mistakes  in 
interpreting  them,"  he  said. 

"  I  don't  think  that  ought  to  stand  in 
239 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

our  way,"  I  replied.  "  If  we  are  so  afraid 
of  misunderstanding  that  we  dare  not  try  to 
understand  at  all — well,  Edward,  the  fact 
seems  to  me  to  be  this :  some  people  who 
know  very  little  have  set  themselves  up  as 
knowing — " 

"  Please,  Geordie,  don't !  That  thought 
has  been  trying  to  undermine  my  faith,  and 
it  has  very  nearly  succeeded." 

14  Your  faith  in  what  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Surely 
your  faith  in  God  needn't  suffer  because  you 
suspect  incapacity  on  the  part  of  those  who 
perhaps  unwarrantably  assume  to  be  his 
authorized  interpreters." 

Edward  made  no  answer  then.  Forty 
years  later  he  picked  up  a  trilobite  one  day, 
and  said  to  me : 

"  Do  you  remember  how  hard  it  once 
was  for  me  to  distinguish  between  truth 
and  the  teachings  that  assumed  authority — 
between  the  teachings  of  God  and  those  of 
men  who  professed  to  know  his  ways  and 
his  purposes?  " 

240 


Some    Revelations    of    Character 

"Yes,"  I  answered.  "  I  remember.  You 
then  called  atrilobite  an  antediluvian  creature. 
You  would  hardly  give  the  Noah's  ark  story 
that  much  credit  now." 

"  No,"  he  answered,  "  and  yet  nine- 
tenths  of  the  American  people  believe  that 
story  even  now,  nine-tenths  of  them  believe  in 
miracles,  and  really  suppose  that  the  world  is 
only  six  thousand  years  old,  that  Adam  and 
Eve  were  historical  personages  and  all  the  rest 
of  it.  It  will  be  a  hundred  years  and  more  be 
fore  the  average  American  citizen  finds  out 
even  those  things  that  are  the  commonplaces 
of  thought  to  all  educated  men.  Only  the 
other  day  I  read  a  very  labored  book,  whose 
author,  a  devout  Kentucky  clergyman,  sought 
to  prove  that  negroes  are  pre-Adamites  and 
have  no  souls." 

"  He  sent  it  to  you  ?  "  I  ask~d. 

"Yes,  with  a  request  for  my  opinion, 
as  usual." 

"What  did  you  say  to  him?" 

"  I  said  I  thought  he  must  be  right  in 

241 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

believing  that  negroes  have  no  souls,  inas 
much  as  there  is  absolutely  no  reason  to 
think  that  negroes  have  any  advantage  over 
white  men  in  that  respect." 

In  tracing  the  influences  that  helped  to 
develop  the  mind  of  a  man  like  Edward 
Eggleston,  it  seems  to  me  equally  a  duty  to 
set  forth  those  influences  that  stood  in  the 
way.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  parts  of  this 
chapter  are  written. 


242 


CHAPTER    XII. 

The    Hoosier    Schoolmaster's   Theory   and 
Practice  of  Teaching'. 

T  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  author  of 
"The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  was 
never  a  schoolmaster  at  all.  About 
the  time  of  which  these  chapters 
treat,  Edward  Eggleston  did  indeed  apply 
for  a  first-class  teacher's  license  under  the 
Indiana  school  laws.  Pie  easily  passed  the 
examination,  secured  the  license  and  was  ap 
pointed  to  the  principalship  of  a  school  in 
the  suburbs  of  Madison.  Then  he  set  him 
self  to  work  on  Greek  and  within  two  weeks 
had  so  broken  down  his  health  by  overstudy 
that  he  was  obliged  to  resign  his  appoint 
ment  and  go  off  again  in  search  of  health. 

That,  I  believe,  was  his  only  experience 
in  teaching,  at  least  in  any  formal  way.  But 
he  was  always  a  teacher  and  a  source  of  in- 

243 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

spiration.  One  of  his  pupils  at  that  school, 
who  is  now  a  person  of  prominence,  said  to 
me  at  the  Authors  Club,  not  long  ago,  point 
ing  to  Edward's  portrait  by  Wiles: 

"  That  man  taught  me  how  to  study, 
and,  better  still,  why  to  study.  To  him  I 
owe  it  that  I  am  educated." 

I  shall  never  forget  how  he  followed  up 
my  Latin  preparation  for  college. 

u  Now  Geordie,"  he  said,  "  they  reckon 
Greek  a  lame  duck,  and  they  make  provision 
for  it.  But  it  is  a  lame  duck  sort  of  provi 
sion,  and  I  don't  want  you  to  have  anything 
to  do  with  it.  They  have  a  preparatory  Greek 
course,  under  an  adjunct  professor.  He 
gives  you  a  part  of  a  paradigm  to  learn  each 
day — the  present  tense  of  the  indicative 
mood  to-day,  and  the  imperfect  to-morrow. 
Don't  have  anything  to  do  with  that  class. 
Simply  say  you  will  be  prepared  in  two  weeks 
to  pass  your  entrance  examinations  in  Greek, 
and  then  set  to  work  to  prepare  yourself  pre 
cisely  as  you  have  done  in  Latin.  Remem- 
214 


Hoosier  Theory  and    Practice  of  Teaching 

her  that  a  mastery  of  the  paradigms  is  every 
thing.  Find  some  fellow  just  as  lame  in 
Greek  as  you  are  and  get  him  to  join  you. 
If  it  costs  you  more  by  a  dollar  or  two  a 
week  to  room  with  him,  don't  let  that  stand 
in  the  way.  I  am  earning  that  much  as  a 
grocery  clerk,  and  I'll  pay  the  difference. 
You  and  he  should  shut  yourselves  up  in 
your  room  during  every  hour  that  college 
requirements  leave  free,  and  continually  prod 
each  other  with  Greek  conjugations.  The 
'  lesson'  prescribed  by  the  professor  for  the 
first  day  will  be  the  present,  active,  indicative 
of  Tupto.  Instead  of  that  you  must  both 
of  you  learn  the  whole  conjugation  of  that 
verb  before  you  go  to  your  breakfast 
sausages,  and  then,  before  you  present  your 
selves  at  your  first  lecture,  you  must  per 
fectly  know  how  to  conjugate  the  irregular 
verb  erkomai  from  start  to  finish.  If  you 
and  your  workfellow  wrork  half  as  well  in 
your  Greek  as  you  have  done  with  me  in 
Latin,  before  the  two  weeks  are  over  you'll 

245 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

know  how  to  decline  every  Greek  noun  and 
adjective  and  how  to  conjugate  every  regu 
lar  and  nearly  every  irregular  Greek  verb, 
and  in  doing  that  you'll  acquire  vocabulary 
enough  to  enable  you  not  only  to  pass  your 
entrance  examinations  without  any  thanks  to 
your  adjunct  professor's  laborious  teachings, 
but  to  take  the  lead  in  your  class.  But  one 
thing  more  I  want  you  and  that  other  fellow 
to  do.  I  have  written  out  a  vocabulary  for 
you  to  learn.  It  includes  between  300  and 
400  words,  with  their  primary  meanings.  I 
want  you  to  commit  it  absolutely  to  memory, 
so  that  whenever  and  wherever  any  one  of 
those  words  may  occur  you'll  know  what  it 
means — in  a  general  way  at  least." 

I  had  not  dreamed  that  Edward  knew 
so  much  of  Greek.  He  had  never  had  a 
lesson  in  that  language  in  his  life,  but  I 
found  his  method  of  study  the  very  best  I 
ever  knew.  Afterwards,  when  it  became 
necessary  for  me  to  earn  my  own  college 
expenses  by  tutoring  some  boys  during  vaca- 

246 


Hoosier  Theory  and    Practice  of  Teaching 

tion,  for  their  entrance  examinations,  I  fol 
lowed  the  same  plan  with  satisfactory  results. 
I  gravely  wonder  to-day  that  no  teacher  in 
our  secondary  schools  has  ever  hit  upon  a 
like  method.  Perhaps  other  and  more  con 
ventional  methods  are  easier  to  the  teacher 
— as  they  certainly  are  to  the  pupil  who 
doesn't  want  to  study  very  hard.  Perhaps- 
well  it  doesn't  matter.  I  only  know  that  by 
the  methods  devised  by  the  mainly  self-edu 
cated  boy,  Edward  Eggleston,  I  learned  in 
eight  days  to  read  simple  Latin  at  sight,  and 
in  two  weeks  to  read  easy  Greek  in  the  same 
way,  to  conjugate  nearly  every  verb,  regular 
and  irregular,  to  decline  every  noun  and  ad 
jective,  and  to  turn  simple  English  sentences 
into  approximately  correct  Greek,  almost 
without  effort. 

I  sometimes  wonder  if  there  ought  not 
to  be  a  divine  call  to  teach,  as  there  is  sup 
posed  to  be  a  divine  call  to  preach.  Cer 
tainly  Edward  Eggleston,  at  the  age  of  less 
than  eighteen,  knew  better  how  to  teach 

247 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

Latin  and  Greek  than  do  the  most  skilful 
teachers  in  our  most  pretentious  preparatory 
schools  to-day.  Our  boys  spend  several 
years,  at  an  expense  of  half  a  thousand  dol 
lars  a  year,  in  learning  what  Edward  Eggles- 
ton,  while  still  under  eighteen  years  of  age, 
taught  in  a  week  or  two  to  a  not  exception 
ally  bright  pupil. 

Let  me  record  it  here  as  my  well-con 
sidered  conviction,  that  if  there  were  any 
means  of  selection  among  the  pupils  of  our 
great  preparatory  schools,  one  year's  tuition 
would  be  ample,  instead  of  the  four  years 
now  given  to  High  School  work,  to  prepare 
the  best  quarter  of  their  number  for  college 
or  for  the  undertaking  of  professional  study. 
Our  schools  are  at  present  organized  on  the 
basis  of  the  capacity  and  the  willingness  of 
the  duller  three-fourths.  That  other  fourth 
—the  one  that  is  alone  really  worth  consider 
ing,  the  one  that  is  alone  worthy  to  enter 
college  or  a  professional  school — is  crippled 
and  practiced  in  indolence  from  beginning  to 

248 


Hoosier  Theory  and    Practice  of  Teaching' 

end,  by  having  the  incapacities  of  its  duller 
classmates  set  up  as  the  standard  and  meas 
ure  of  its  achievement.  Why  isn't  there  a 
school  in  all  our  land  in  which  a  really  bright 
and  earnest  boy  can  prepare  himself  for  col 
lege  or  for  professional  study  in  one  year 
instead  of  four?  And  why  isn't  there  a  col 
lege  in  which  a  boy  of  real  capacity  is  per 
mitted  to  master  the  four  years'  course  in 
one  year  or  two,  as  any  boy  of  real  capacity 
and  industry  easily  might? 

The  fundamental  defect  lies  in  tradition, 
but  it  is  reflected  also  in  the  teaching.  To 
the  youth  who  is  really  taught  the  higher 
algebra,  all  the  rest  of  mathematics  follows 
as  a  matter  of  course;  and  a  few  weeks,  or 
at  most  a  few  months,  of  competent  teaching 
would  enable  him  to  complete  that  part  of 
his  course.  To  the  youth  who  knows  his 
paradigms  and  is  master  of  a  reasonable 
vocabulary  in  Greek  or  Latin,  a  very  few 
months  at  most  should  suffice  for  all  needed 
preparation  for  final  examinations. 

249 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

Unhappily  our  educational  system  is 
founded  upon  different  conceptions.  Our 
courses  of  study  are  marked  out  for  the 
duller  rather  than  the  brighter  pupils.  They 
are  arranged  with  far  greater  reference  to 
the  ease  and  comfort  than  to  the  earnest 
work  of  professors  and  tutors. 

Is  there  any  profession  in  the  world  in 
which  men  do  so  little  for  their  money  as  in 
that  of  teaching?  The  schoolmaster  gives 
five  or  six  hours  a  day  to  his  work  during 
five  days  in  the  week — a  total  of  25  or  30 
hours  a  week.  What  other  profession  lets 
one  off  so  easily?  Then,  too,  the  school 
master  has  a  world  of  holidays  that  no  other 
professional  man  enjoys.  All  his  Saturdays 
and  Sundays  are  his  own  for  rest.  Labor 
day,  election  day,  Thanksgiving,  Christmas, 
New  Year's,  Washington's  birthday,  Lin 
coln's  birthday,  Decoration  day  and  the 
Fourth  of  July  are  free  days  to  him.  In 
addition,  he  has  a  vacation  at  Christmas, 
another  at  Easter,  and  one  of  three  months 

250 


Hoosier  Theory  and    Practice  of  Teaching 

or  longer  in  the  summer.  What  lawyer, 
doctor,  clergyman,  newspaper  writer  or  man 
of  letters,  commands  or  expects  such  leisure? 
And  it  is  all  paid  for  by  the  parents  of  boys 
and  girls  who  must  be  educated.  If  teachers 
would  work  as  continuously,  as  industri 
ously,  and  as  intelligently  as  men  of  all  other 
professions  do  and  must  do,  the  academic 
course  could  be  completely  mastered  within 
a  year,  or  two  years  at  most,  and  a  year  or  a 
year  and  a  half  of  earnest  work  would  amply 
suffice  for  the  mastery  of  any  college  curricu 
lum  appointed  in  this  country. 

This  is  saying  nothing  whatever  with 
respect  to  the  needless  and  time-wasteful 
expansion  of  the  curriculum.  Granting  that 
everything  required  is  desirable — and  it  is  a 
large  granting — an  earnest  student  under  an 
earnest  teacher  ought  to  master  the  school 
course  in  two  years  at  most,  and  the  college 
course  in  two  years  more.  A  really  bright 
boy,  if  his  teacher  knows  how  to  teach, 
should  be  able  to  do  it  within  half  that  time. 

251 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

Daniel  Webster  was  graduated  from  college 
at  19  years  of  age;  Edward  Everett  at  17, 
and  the  other  great  men  of  our  land  at  about 
the  same  age.  To-day  the  requirements  are 
such  that  the  student  who  enters  college 
must  be  a  year  or  two  older  than  these  men 
were  when  they  left  it  with  their  degrees. 
Is  this  an  advance  in  education  or  the  reverse 
—a  gain  or  a  loss?  Is  it  desirable  that  the 
boy  shall  spend  the  first  twenty-five  years  of 
his  life  in  preparation  for  a  problematical 
twenty-five  years  more  of  activity?  Are  we 
not  making  a  fetich  of  mere  scholarship  ?  Are 
we  not  giving  an  excessive  period  of  youth 
to  mere  acquirement,  both  by  wasting  the 
time  appointed  for  acquirement,  and  by  ex 
acting  a  needless  amount  of  acquirement? 
Bearing  in  mind  the  facts  that  life  is  short 
and  that  the  object  of  education  is  so  to 
train  the  mind  as  to  get  its  best  results  in 
active  ways,  is  not  our  entire  educational 
system  wrong  at  both  ends?  Does  it  not 
require  more  of  mere  acquirement  than  is 

252 


Hoosier  Theory  and    Practice  of  Teaching 

actually  needful,  and  does  not  the  indolence 
of  teachers  exact  a  larger  expenditure  of 
time  than  is  really  necessary  for  such  acquire 
ment? 

These  are  questions  which  we  must  seri 
ously  think  about  if  we  really  care  for  the 
future  of  our  country  and  of  mankind. 
There  is  a  professional  impulse  on  the  part 
of  those  who  teach,  to  exact  more  and  more 
of  those  who  learn.  It  is  a  natural  impulse, 
and,  properly  directed,  a  wholesome  one. 
But  is  it  not  capable  of  abuse,  and  is  it  not 
in  fact  abused?  Is  not  mere  scholarship 
unduly  exalted  in  our  time,  and  does  not 
achievement  pay  the  penalty?  Was  not  a 
Daniel  Webster  graduated  at  19,  an  Edward 
Everett  at  17,  worth  more  to  the  world  than 
Daniel  Webster  and  Edward  Everett  gradu 
ated  at  twenty-five  with  vastly  more  of  mere 
learning,  would  have  been? 

For  specialists  in  scholarship  of  course 
there  can  be  no  limit  set  to  needful  acquire 
ments  ;  but  for  the  men  who  are  to  do  the 
253 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

world's  great  work  in  one  or  another  depart 
ment  of  active  endeavor,  it  seems  easily  pos 
sible  to  exact  too  much,  and  to  waste  need 
less  years  in  preparation  that  does  not  pre 
pare.  Still  more  obvious  is  it  that  diligence 
in  teaching  and  the  use  of  enlightened 
methods  might  greatly  shorten  the  period  of 
preparation,  no  matter  what  the  require 
ments  may  be. 


254 


D 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

A  Pair  of  Young  Tramps. 

URING  this  time,  after  Edward's  re 
turn  from  Virginia,  he  and  I  began, 
or    rather    resumed,    a    course    of 
tramping  that  had  a  most  beneficial 
effect  upon  his  health. 

Before  and  after  he  "chucked  me  into 
college,"  as  he  boyishly  described  the  per 
formance,  we  accustomed  ourselves,  in  my 
vacation  times,  to  prolonged  walks,  some 
times  extending  over  several  weeks  of  time. 
If  there  was  anything  to  be  seen,  anywhere 
within  pedestrian  reach,  we  went  to  see  it, 
adopting  the  most  primitive  travel  methods, 
and  enduring  very  cheerfully  all  the  hard 
ships  incident  to  such  methods.  We  slept 
in  hay  mows,  or  under  straw  stacks,  or,  upon 
occasion,  in  fence  corners,  We  sometimes 
got  a  breakfast  or  a  dinner  at  some  hospita- 
255 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

ble  farmer's  house,  where  our  tender  of 
money  in  payment — for  we  always  carried  a 
little  money  and  never  failed  to  offer  pay 
for  our  food  and  lodging — was  usually  re- 
jected  with  that  scorn  which  the  Western 
farmer  at  that  time  felt  for  the  man  who 
would  "  charge  "  for  a  meal  or  a  night's 
lodging.  In  the  main,  however,  we  ate  corn 
bread  and  bacon  from  our  pockets. 

On  these  journeys  Edward  reduced 
everything  to  system,  after  his  habitual  man 
ner.  He  had  a  big  bull's-eye  silver  watch, 
which  kept  good  enough  time  for  all  our 
purposes,  and  by  it  he  regulated  our  tramp- 
ings.  We  would  set  out  in  the  morning  to 
cover  a  prescribed  distance.  Edward  would 
mark  off  the  miles  into  relays  and  estimate 
very  carefully  how  long  it  should  take  us  to 
cover  each  subdivision  of  the  distance.  It 
was  his  usual  practice  to  reduce  our  periods 
of  walking  to  fifteen  minutes  each,  with  one 
minute's  rest  at  the  end  of  each  quarter 
hour,  and  three  minutes'  rest  at  the  end  of 
256 


A      Pair      of      Young      Tramps 

each  hour.  But  country  miles  are  apt  to  be 
erratic  in  their  length,  and  so  sometimes  we 
were  delayed  much  longer  on  our  road  than 
we  had  expected,  while  sometimes  instead 
we  would  arrive  at  our  destination  some 
hours  earlier  than  we  had  planned.  These 
things  were  never  suffered  to  interfere  with 
our  program.  If  we  got  to  our  night's  desti 
nation  before  the  time  appointed  that  meant 
an  extra  period  of  rest.  If  we  were  half  an 
hour  or  an  hour  late,  we  accepted  that  as 
proof  that  the  country  people  had  mistaken 
the  length  of  their  miles.  In  either  case  we 
were  a  happy  and  contented  pair  of  boys. 

About  that  time  Bayard  Taylor  pub 
lished  in  a  newspaper  a  series  of  articles  con 
cerning  the  Mammoth  Cave  in  Kentucky, 
which  he  had  recently  visited.  I  don't  know 
how  we  happened  to  get  hold  of  those  fasci 
nating  papers,  but  we  did  so,  and  straightway 
the  impulse  seized  us  to  visit  that  wonder  of 
nature. 

With  three  or  four  pounds  of  bacon  and 
257 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

two  pones  of  corn-bread  to  the  good,  we  set 
out  on  our  journey.  A  few  miles  below 
Madison  we  got  two  fence  rails,  attached  our 
clothing  to  the  further  ends  of  them,  and 
swam  the  river.  That  night  we  slept  in  a 
barn.  The  next  morning  we  were  arrested, 
charged  with  aiding  or  planning  to  aid  in  the 
escape  of  a  runaway  negro  who  had  disap 
peared,  but  of  whose  existence  we  had  never 
heard.  As  the  negro  was  presently  found  in 
a  barn  in  a  state  of  helpless  intoxication,  we 
boys  were  promptly  discharged,  but  with  a 
warning  that  Hoosiers  were  not  wanted  south 
of  the  river.  A  boat  was  placed  at  our  ser 
vice,  in  which  we  recrossed  the  stream,  and 
after  that  we  walked  back  to  Madison,  com 
pelled  to  take  Bayard  Taylor's  word  for  the 
existence  of  the  Mammoth  Cave,  and  for  all 
its  wonders. 

But,  in  brooding  over  the  matter,  I  be 
came   dissatisfied  with   this   solution  of  the 
problem.     I  do  not  think  I  cared  particularly 
for  the  Mammoth  Cave,  but  it  was  my  habit 
253  ^J 


A      Pair      of       Young'      Tramps 

of  mind  to  resent  and  resist  any  balking  of 
my  purposes,  whatever  they  might  be,  by  the 
arbitrary  will  of  others.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
to  go  to  the  Mammoth  Cave  had  become  an 
imperative  duty  which  Edward  and  I  owed  to 
our  own  self-respect.  I  happened  to  know 
that  a  well-to-do  neighbor  of  ours  was  just 
then  getting  in  his  year's  supply  of  wood,  so 
early  in  the  morning  I  went  to  him  and  took 
the  contract  to  saw,  split  and  cord  up  his 
wood  for  a  certain  price  per  cord.  I  had 
sawed  and  split  and  corded  wood  all  my  life 
as  a  contribution  of  service  to  the  domestic 
economy  of  our  household,  but  never  before 
had  I  done  so  for  money.  I  was  gravely 
apprehensive  that  if  the  present  state  of  facts 
should  become  known  in  the  family  some 
form  of  prohibition  would  be  interposed. 
So  I  kept  the  matter  secret.  By  this  and 
some  other  work  that  I  secured,  and  by  the 
sale  of  such  school  text-books  as  I  had  done 
with,  I  secured,  altogether,  the  sum  of  six 
dollars  and  seventy-five  cents, 

259 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

With  so  much  money  in  hand,  I  went  to 
Edward  and  announced  that  he  and  I  were 
going  upon  our  contemplated  travels.  Fifty 
cents  apiece  paid  our  deck  passage  to  Louis 
ville  on  a  steamboat.  There  we  bought 
crackers,  smoked  herrings  and  cheese,  and, 
thus  provisioned,  we  set  out  to  walk  the  few 
miles  that  lay  between  the  city  and  the  cave. 

The  great  cavern  was  a  disappointment 
to  us.  Perhaps  we  lacked  something  of  that 
creative  imagination  with  which  Bayard  Tay 
lor  had  seen  and  described  it.  At  any  rate, 
we  felt  rather  ill-repaid  for  our  journey,  par 
ticularly  as  Edward  managed  to  lose  the  re 
mainder  of  our  money  before  we  got  back 
to  Louisville,  so  that  we  had  to  tramp  the 
extra  fifty  miles  or  so  of  our  homeward 
journey  from  that  city  to  Madison. 

All  this  occurred  before  the  time  when 
Edward  undertook  to  prepare  me  for  my 
college  examinations.  It  is  related  here  as  a 
part  of  what  the  lawyers  call  the  res  gesta  of 
Edward  Eggleston's  youth. 
260 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

The  Wander  Year. 

N  the  spring  of  1856  Edward's  health 
broke  down  completely.     He  had 
hemorrhages,  supposed  to  be  from 
the  lungs,  and  the  decision  of  the 
doctors  was  that  he  was  doomed  to  die  pres 
ently  of  consumption. 

Our  mother  took  him  on  a  voyage  to 
St.  Louis— in  the  hope  that  the  journey  might 
restore  his  health.  It  did  nothing  to  promise 
recovery  or  even  betterment,  but  on  the  way 
the  boy  fell  in  with  a  number  of  other  people 
afflicted  as  he  was,  who  were  'going  to  Min 
nesota — at  that  time  the  new  land  of  promise 
for  consumptives. 

He  made  up  his  mind  to  go  thither  also. 
Our  mother  could  barely  and  with  difficulty 
furnish  him  with  passage  money  up  the  river, 
but  he  bravely  undertook  to  look  out  for 

261 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

himself  after  he  should  land  in  Minnesota, 
and,  with  very  little  hope  for  health,  as  he 
wrote  me  at  the  time,  he  set  out. 

He  used  to  relate  that  on  the  way  up 
the  river  the  captain  of  his  steamboat,  who 
was  commodore  of  the  line,  took  sufficient 
interest  in  him  to  give  him  advice. 

"  Now,  some  o'  these  fellers,"  he  said, 
"has  got  only  a  little  o'  your  trouble,  an' 
mebbe  the  climate  o'  Minnesota  will  help 
'em  to  live  on  for  a  few  months  or  a  year  or 
so.  But  you've  got  it  too  bad  for  that.  Take 
a  fool's  advice  an'  go  right  back  home,  so's 
you  can  pick  out  the  place  you  want  to  be 
buried  in.  If  you  ain't  got  money  enough  for 
that,  I  kin  arrange  for  passes.  But  the  one 
thing  fer  you  to  do  is  to  go  home  jest  as 
quick  as  you  kin." 

Years  afterward  Edward  had  occasion  to 
travel  frequently  on  this  old  captain's  steam 
boat  and  the  two  became  devoted  friends — 
the  one  being  a  Methodist  preacher  and  the 
other  a  bluff  steamboat  man  who,  for  lack 

262 


The         Wander          Year 

of  an  adequate  supply  of  other  adjectives, 
sprinkled  an  entirely  meaningless  profanity 
through  his  sentences.  Edward,  throughout 
his  life  objected,  on  principle,  to  all  "  dead 
heading  "  of  the  clergy,  and  to  all  "dis 
counts"  made  to  preachers  on  the  ground 
of  their  calling.  He  insisted  that  these  prac 
tices  constituted  a  pauperizing  of  the  clergy, 
and  would  himself  have  none  of  it.  He 
even  wrote  humorously  on  the  subject  years 
afterward  in  the  Century  Magazine,  ridicul 
ing  such  "  dead-heading  "  with  caustic  con 
tempt,  and  insisting  that  a  clergyman  owed 
it  to  his  own  self-respect  to  pay  his  way  like 
any  other  citizen.  But  he  never  succeeded 
in  paying  his  passage  on  any  boat  of  the  line 
which  this  old  captain  owned  and  controlled. 
When  he  raised  the  point  of  principle  in  a 
controversy  over  the  matter  one  day,  the 
captain  replied : 

u  Well,  now,  it's  been  my  rule  all  my 
life  never  to  charge  fare  to  a  corpse,  an' 
you're  a  corpse,  though  you  don't  look  like 

263 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

one.  The  first  time  you  traveled  with  me 
I  tole  you  you  hadn't  more'n  a  month  to 
live.  Well,  that  month's  gone  many  a  month 
ago,  an'  so  you're  dead  or  else  I'm  a  liar,  an' 
I  never  yet  allowed  even  a  preacher  to  call 
me  that.  You  can't  never  pay  no  fare  on  no 
steamboat  that  I  own  without  callin'  me  a 
liar,  so  that's  the  end  of  that." 

"  And  think  of  it,"  Edward  said  to  me 
one  day  long  after  the  old  captain  had  been 
gathered  to  his  fathers,  "  at  that  time  I  was 
deeply  apprehensive  for  the  future  welfare 
of  that  dear  old  man's  soul,  just  as  if  God 
didn't  know  what  stuff  men  are  made  of." 

Edward  landed  in  Minnesota — then  a 
new  territory  just  beginning  its  settlement 
—in  May,  1856.  He  was  a  mere  boy  of 
18  years.  He  was  absolutely  without  ac 
quaintance  there  and  absolutely  penniless.  In 
the  search  for  bread-winning  work  he  must 
match  his  frail  physique  against  the  robust 
ness  of  hundreds  of  stalwart  youths  who 
had  gone  west  to  conquer  fortunes  for  them- 

2G4 


The         Wander         Year 

selves.  The  contest  was  an  unequal  one,  but 
the  frail  boy's  "  grit "  stood  him  in  good 
stead,  and  its  recognition  on  the  part  of  the 
gloriously  brave  "  frontier  conquerors,"  as 
he  loved  to  call  them,  was  ready  and  gen 
erous. 

He  did  whatever  work  there  was  to  do. 
He  became  chain  carrier  to  a  surveying  party, 
and  with  his  readiness  in  learning,  he  quickly 
picked  up  a  knowledge  of  the  art  and  sci 
ence  of  surveying,  which  later  enabled  him 
to  take  command  of  a  surveying  party  on 
his  own  account.  But,  his  health  failing 
again,  he  had  to  abandon  that  employment 
and  go  to  bed  for  a  time. 

At  one  time  he  became  the  driver  of 
three  yoke  of  oxen  hitched  to  a  prairie 
breaking  plow.  At  another  time  he  took 
the  agency  for  a  soap-making  recipe  and 
peddled  it  over  the  county.  When  taunted 
with  this  experience  in  after  and  more  dis 
tinguished  years  his  reply  was  ready: 

"  It  was  the  best  soap  recipe  I  ever  saw, 

265 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

and  soap  was  a  good  deal  needed  in  that 
country.  I  am  prouder  of  my  soap  recipe 
selling  than  I  am  of  my  preaching  there;  for 
the  soap  was  above  criticism,  while  the  ser 
mons  certainly  were  not." 

He  engaged  in  other  occupations  also, 
by  way  of  earning  a  living,  both  at  this  time 
of  his  first  stay  in  the  far  northwest,  and 
during  his  later  career  as  a  preacher  there, 
when  frequently  failing  health  obliged  him, 
now  and  again,  to  give  up  his  pastorates  and 
engage  in  other  work.  Of  these  occupations 
he  used  afterwards  to  say:  "Some  of  them 
may  have  been  undignified,  but  they  were  all 
honest — and  they  brought  me  a  living  when 
I  had  need  of  it." 

Was  it  not  in  that  spirit  that  this  great, 
free  nation  of  ours  was  built  up  in  a  wilder 
ness  in  which  the  gospel  of  work  played  a 
larger  part  than  any  more  abstruse  teaching 
could  have  done? 

After  a  few  months  of  outdoor  life,  the 
boy's  health  was  so  far  improved  that  he 

266 


&F: 


EDWARD  EGGLESTON   IN   1875 


The         Wander          Year 

determined  to  return  to  his  home  and  resume 
his  studies  with  a  view  to  that  ministry  of 
the  gospel  to  which  he  looked  forward  as  his 
appointed  career.  He  had  earned  enough 
by  hard  work  on  the  prairies  to  feed  and 
clothe  himself  there,  but  he  had  no  sur 
plus  money  with  which  to  pay  his  way  home. 
So  he  wrote  to  me,  asking  me  to  send  him 
thirty  dollars  out  of  his  share  in  our  slender 
estate. 

I  sent  him  the  money  by  express,  in  the 
form  of  thirty  silver  dollars. 

But  mails  were  slow  in  those  days,  and 
his  letter  had  been  long  in  coming.  A  day 
or  two  after  I  had  sent  off  the  money  Ed 
ward  himself  appeared — travel  worn  but  in 
better  health  than  I  had  ever  seen  him. 

He  had  a  stirring  story  to  tell.  After 
writing  me  the  letter  asking  for  money  for 
his  home-coming,  he  had  been  seized  with  a 
sudden  enthusiasm  to  bear  a  part  in  behalf 
of  freedom  in  the  bloody  struggle  then 
going  on  in  Kansas.  So,  without  waiting  to 
267 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

receive  the  money  for  which  he  had  written 
to  me,  he  had  strapped  a  knapsack  upon  his 
back  and  set  out  to  walk  from  Minnesota  to 
Kansas.  His  path  being  hopelessly  blocked 
in  Iowa,  he  turned  about  and  decided  to 
make  his  way  homeward,  well-nigh  penniless 
and  on  foot,  across  a  country  which  at  that 
time  was  almost  wholly  without  inhabitants. 
For  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  miles  he 
traveled  across  desert  wastes,  living  upon 
such  food  as  he  could  here  and  there  find, 
sleeping  upon  the  prairie  under  the  stars  and 
among  the  wolves,  and  often  going  without 
water  for  more  than  a  day  at  a  time. 

Finally,  he  had  reached  a  railroad,  and 
found  that  by  the  expenditure  of  two  dol 
lars  more  than  he  had  in  possession  he 
could  pay  his  fare  to  Lafayette,  Indiana, 
where  a  step  brother  lived.  Not  having  the 
two  dollars  he  laid  the  case  before  an  entire 
stranger,  of  a  disposition  so  kindly  that  he 
willingly  advanced  the  money.  To  return  it 
promptly  was  Edward's  first  concern  on 
268 


The         Wander         Year 

reaching  home,  and  in  aid  of  that  purpose 
I  undertook  to  tutor  a  stupid  and  rather  dis 
agreeable  boy  through  his  coming  first  term 
in  college,  taking  him  as  my  room-mate  in 
spite  of  his  disagreeableness,  on  condition 
that  he  would  make  advance  payment  of 
the  two  dollars  which  alone  I  was  to  get 
for  seeing  to  it  that  he  should  pass  his 
examinations  at  the  end  of  the  next  and  now 
approaching  term.  We  had  relatives  in  the 
town  who  would  gladly  have  furnished  the 
money,  or  it  might  somehow  have  been 
squeezed  out  of  the  sadly  embarrassed  estate, 
but  I  preferred  to  secure  it  by  my  own  ex 
ertions,  as  an  expression  of  my  joy  in  having 
my  brother  back  again  as  my  comrade. 

The  comradeship  was  not  to  be  for 
long.  I  must  almost  immediately  return  to 
college,  and  Edward  was  fixed  in  his  deter 
mination  to  secure  a  preacher's  license  and 
begin  his  career  as  a  Methodist  circuit  rider. 
Until  this  time  he  had  cherished  the  hope  of 
taking  a  college  course,  but  repeated  experi- 
269 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

ment  in  close  application  to  study  had  finally 
convinced  him  that  this  was  impossible,  that 
he  must  live  in  the  open  air  during  the  greater 
part  of  his  waking  hours,  and  that  whatever 
of  study  he  might  attempt  must  be  done  in 
full  recognition  of  this  necessity. 

He  was  not  yet  nineteen  years  old,  but 
his  mind  was  mature  far  beyond  his  years,  as 
it  always  had  been.  He  was  already  and 
very  greatly  the  superior  in  education  of  most 
of  the  young  Methodist  preachers  of  that 
time,  and  of  most  of  the  college  graduates, 
too,  for  that  matter,  if  in  education  we  in 
clude  travel,  experience,  and  the  educative 
influence  of  a  varied  contact  with  men.  Why, 
then,  should  he  not  begin  his  work  without 
further  delay  ? 

That  question  was  promptly  answered. 
The  church  authorities  were  glad  to  ordain 
him,  and  he  was  eagerly  ready  for  work.  He 
was  assigned  to  a  circuit  in  extreme  south 
eastern  Indiana,  as  its  junior  minister,  with 
ten  different  preaching  appointments. 

270 


The         Wander          Year 

For  six  months  he  "  rode  circuit,"  spend 
ing  the  greater  part  of  his  days  on  horse 
back  and  eating  and  sleeping  wherever  he 
might  be  invited  to  eat  and  sleep  among  the 
hill  people. 

This  life  gave  him  few  opportunities  for 
reading  or  study,  for  in  those  days  when 
"  the  preacher"  came  to  any  house  it  was  ex 
pected  that  he  should  hold  prayers  with  the 
family,  gently  lecture  and  admonish  the 
children,  and  make  himself  agreeable  as  the 
centre  of  a  local  society  of  which  every 
member  was  invited  to  breakfast,  dine,  sup 
or  spend  the  evening  in  his  supposedly  up 
lifting  company.  There  was  no  seclusion, 
no  privacy  for  him  in  any  house.  More  than 
half  the  time  he  was  expected  to  occupy  the 
same  room  and  even  the  same  bed  with  the 
boys  of  the  family.  Nowhere  was  he  free 
from  converse  that  contributed  not  at  all  to 
his  culture  or  to  his  intellectual  growth. 
To  "  entertain  the  preacher"  meant  not  only 
to  provide  him  with  lodging  and  meals,  but 

271 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

also  to  keep  his  mind  continually  occupied 
with  an  entirely  unimproving  conversation 
which  consumed  his  time  to  no  purpose. 

To  meet  these  conditions  Edward 
adopted  a  plan  of  his  own,  of  which  he 
wrote  to  me  at  college,  in  gleeful  exultation. 
He  had  been  bred  to  expert  horsemanship 
from  his  earliest  infancy,  and  could  both  ride 
and  control  the  least  tractable  of  horses. 
But  he  wanted  time  and  opportunity  for 
reading  and  study,  so  he  wrote  to  me: 

u  I  have  bought  a  good,  strong,  and  very 
lazy  horse,  without  enough  spirit  in  him  to 
think  of  going  at  any  gait  faster  than  a  walk 
unless  whipped  or  spurred  into  involuntary 
exertion  of  a  strictly  temporary  character. 
The  distance  between  'appointments'  is  con 
siderable,  and  with  such  a  horse  I  have  abun 
dant  excuse  for  starting  early  and  arriving 
late.  By  taking  all  day  to  make  journeys 
that  might  easily  be  accomplished  in  a  few 
hours,  I  get  all  day  instead  of  a  few  hours 
for  my  study.  I  throw  the  reins  on  my 
272 


The         Wander         Year 

horse's  neck  and  let  him  jog  on  at  his  favor 
ite  speed  of  two  or  three  miles  an  hour. 
Then  I  get  out  a  book  and  devote  my  time 
to  profitable  reading  or  study.  As  I  cannot 
carry  my  Greek  or  Latin  dictionaries  with 
me,  I  must  do  without  them.  But  I  find 
that  to  be  not  altogether  a  disadvantage.  It 
compels  me  to  think  for  my  vocabulary,  and 
to  study  context  in  a  way  that  I  should  never 
do  if  I  had  a  dictionary  at  hand.  I  have 
just  finished  reading  the  Oedipus  Tyrannis  in 
this  way,  and  while  the  lack  of  lexicon  refer 
ence  has  doubtless  cost  me  some  of  the  nice 
ties  of  scholarship,  I  am  not  sure  that  the 
loss  hasn't  been  more  than  made  good  by 
increased  fluency,  and  by  the  compulsion  of 
the  memory  to  retain  what  it  has  once  grasped 
in  the  way  of  word  meanings.  Sometimes  I 
encounter  a  word  the  meaning  of  which  I 
cannot  in  any  wise  make  out.  But  presently 
I  encounter  it  again  in  a  different  connec 
tion,  where  the  context  serves  instead  of  a 
dictionary.  Then  I  go  back  to  the  former 
273 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

passage  and  read  it  in  the  new  light.  I 
wonder  if  it  might  not  be  possible  to  teach 
at  least  the  dead  languages  in  that  way,  after 
the  declensions  and  conjugations  were  learned. 
And  I  am  not  sure  that  it  wouldn't  be  the 
best  way  in  the  end,  at  least  so  far  as  intel 
lectual  discipline  is  concerned." 

He  himself  afterward  applied  this  method 
to  the  learning  of  other  languages  with  con 
spicuous  success.  Knowing  his  Greek,  Latin 
and  French  pretty  well  to  begin  with,  he 
decided  in  his  own  mind  that  whenever  he 
should  have  need  to  read  any  passage  in  any 
language,  he  could  and  would  do  it;  and  to 
the  end  of  his  days  he  did  precisely  that, 
often  to  the  great  advantage  of  his  studies 
in  historical  research. 

But  at  this  time  of  his  early  circuit  riding, 
he  did  not  confine  himself  wholly  or  even 
chiefly  to  scholarly  study.  He  read  volumin 
ously,  mainly  in  lines  that  were  suggested  by 
his  profession.  He  read  Wesley  and  Whit- 
field  and  Thomas  a  Kempis.  But  he  found 

274 


The         Wander         Year 

time  also  to  read  a  world  of  history  and 
biography — particularly  biography  which,  he 
always  contended,  was  "history  cut  in  thick 
slices."  He  read  everything,  in  fact,  upon 
which  his  preternaturally  eager  mind  could 
lay  hands,  and,  youth-like,  he  was  specially 
attracted  to  poetry  of  an  uplifting  sort. 
Such  poetry  he  sometimes  used  in  his  ser 
mons,  as  he  did  also  the  more  inspiring  pas 
sages  of  Scripture. 

"The  practice  is  dangerous,  however," 
he  wrote  to  me,  "  in  this  hill  country.  Not 
long  ago  I  quoted  a  part  of  the  twenty-third 
Psalm,  not  thinking  it  necessary  to  mention 
its  source.  A  few  days  later  a  good  brother 
said  to  me :  '  That  was  a  mighty  pretty  part 
of  your  sermon  about  green  pastures  and 
still  waters  and  all  that.  But  why  don't  you 
preach  that  way  all  the  time?'  Alas,  I  had 
not  only  made  myself  a  plagiarist  of  King 
David,  but  had  set  up  the  choicest  utter 
ances  of  the  sweet  singer  of  Israel  as  a 
standard  of  rhetoric  for  myself." 
775 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

Notwithstanding  the  out  of  door  life  of 
a  circuit  rider,  Edward  studied  himself  into 
illness  again  within  six  months  and  had  to 
abandon  the  work.  After  a  few  months  of 
rest  at  home,  he  turned  his  face  again  toward 
Minnesota,  where  alone,  since  his  infancy,  he 
had  enjoyed  that  measure  of  health  which 
permits  a  man  to  take  his  working  part  in 
life. 


276 


CHAPTER   XV. 

The  Story  of  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster." 


ETWEEN  the  time  of  Edward's 
return  from  his  first  stay  in  Minne 
sota  and  that  of  his  second  jour 
ney  thither,  I  had  some  experiences 
of  my  own  which  mightily  interested  and 
amused  my  brother.  These  experiences  are 
to  be  very  briefly  related  here,  partly  because 
they  reflect  what  still  survived  of  the  "  Hoos 
ier"  life  in  the  hill  country,  very  near  to  the 
higher  civilization  along  the  river,  but  still 
more  because  Edward's  amused  recollection 
of  what  I  told  him  about  them  at  the  time, 
prompted  him  many  years  afterwards  to 
write  "  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster." 

Soon  after  the  beginning  of  my  second 
year  in  college  a  controversy  arose  between 
the  faculty  and  the  student  body,  in  which  I 
thought  then  and  I  think  now  that  the  stu- 

277 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

dents  were  absolutely  right  and  the   faculty 
altogether  wrong.     But  the  faculty  were  in 
authority  and  threatened  the  suspension  of 
all  the  students,  with  expulsion    quickly  to 
follow,  if  we  should  persist  in  our  refusal  to 
accept    the  harsh  and    wholly   unjust   terms 
offered  to  us.     We  persisted  and  all  of  us, 
except  forty-one  who  submitted  at  the  last 
moment,    were     sent   home.      In    justice    to 
the  students  thus  dismissed,  many  of  whom 
have  since  won  high  places   for  themselves 
as    men    of  character  and  brains,  it  should 
be    stated    here    that    the    Board    of    Trus 
tees,  after  hearing    both  sides  of  the    mat 
ter,  decided  that   the   students    were  right, 
and  ordered  their  readmission  to  their  classes 
without    conditions    of    any    kind.     At    the 
same  time  the  Board  asked  the  president  and 
certain    members    of    the    faculty    for   their 
resignations. 

I  did  not  avail  myself  of  the  reinstate 
ment,  for  the  reason  that  I  had,  in  the  mean 
while,  accepted  charge  of  a  school  on  Riker's 
278 


The  Story  of  f'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster*' 

Ridge,  a  few  miles  from  Madison,  in  the  hill 
country.  The  neighborhood  was  at  that 
time  the  most  primitive  one  in  all  that  region, 
though  it  lay  so  close  to  the  chief  city  of 
southern  Indiana.  The  people  there  were 
partly  Pennsylvania  Dutch,  partly  Hoosiers. 
They  were  very  good  and  kindly  people,  as 
I  remember  them,  but  scantily  educated  and 
still  somewhat  disposed  to  cling  to  the  old 
school  tradition  of  "no  lickin'  no  larnin'," 
which  is  emphasized  as  an  axiom  in  "The 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster."  The  advent,  there 
fore,  of  a  schoolmaster  still  under  seventeen 
years  of  age,  to  manage  a  school  in  which  the 
majority  of  the  pupils  were  his  seniors,  was 
looked  upon  with  doubt  and  well-founded 
apprehension.  The  fact  that  I  was  a  college 
student,  and  that  my  education  was  vastly 
superior  to  that  of  any  one  in  the  neighbor 
hood,  was  readily  recognized. 

"But  how's  that  boy  ever  agoin'  to 
manage  sich  a  school  as  ours?"  they  asked. 

"Why,  they's  a  dozen  boys  in  that 
279 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 


school  any  one  of  'em  able  to  lick  him  with 
their  right  hands  tied  behind  'em." 

That  was  true  enough.  It  was  true, 
also,  that  one  of  the  big  boys  had  won  dis 
tinction  by  "licking"  the  last  three  masters. 
He  was  the  original  of  Bud  Means  in  "The 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster,"  though  rather  gen 
tler  of  disposition  than  Bud  was.  Still  he 
had  always  cherished  the  conviction  that  the 
schoolmaster  is  the  natural  enemy  of  the  big 
boy,  an  enemy  to  be  "licked"  upon  the 
smallest  provocation.  It  was  confidently 
predicted,  therefore,  by  the  trustees  of  the 
school,  and  by  the  school  itself,  and  by  all 
the  neighbors,  that  "  school  won't  be  a  week 
old  before  Charley  G will  give  the  mas 
ter  a  lickin'." 

Curiously  enough  it  was  only  through 
Charley  G—  -'s  willing  assistance  that  I  was 
able  to  govern  the  unruly  school  at  all. 
Charley  was  a  young  man  of  twenty-one,  six 
feet  high,  and  as  powerful  almost  as  a  young 
bull,  which  animal  indeed  he  resembled  in 

280 


The  Story  of  f'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster'' 

perfect  symmetry  of  form  and  perfect  com 
mand  of  his  muscles.  He  was  not  only  able 
to  "lick"  me  or  any  other  master  that  the 
school  might  get;  he  could  "lick"  any  boy 
in  the  school  with  no  apparent  effort  what 
ever,  and  every  boy  there  knew  the  fact, 
some  of  them  by  bitter  experience. 

/  But  Charley  was  two  years  older  now 
than  he  had  been  when  he  drove  the  last 
schoolmaster  out  of  the  neighborhood.  Man 
hood  had  come  to  him,  and  with  it  ambition. 
He  had  decided  to  become  a  ship  carpenter, 
and  in  his  preliminary  investigations  regard 
ing  the  opportunities  that  trade  offered  to  a 
young  man  engaging  in  it,  he  had  shrewdly 
observed  two  facts :  first,  that  the  men  who 
became  "  boss  "  ship  carpenters,  or  even  sub- 
bosses,  were  only  those  who  had  learned 
certain  mathematics  that  lay  far  beyond  the 
arithmetic;  secondly,  that  sub-bosses  were 
paid  twice  or  thrice  the  wages  of  ordinary 
hands,  while  boss  ship  carpenters  usually 
grew  well-to-do  and  lived  in  fine  houses. 

281 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

So,  when  the  boy-master  came  to  the 
school — the  first  master  he  had  ever  had  who 
could  teach  algebra,  geometry  and  trigonom 
etry,  the  ambitious  young  man  felt  that  his 
opportunity  had  come.  He  came  to  me  by 
night — or  rather  asked  me  to  go  to  him — 
after  the  first  day  of  school — during  which, 
as  he  afterwards  told  me,  he  had  carefully 
"sized  me  up"  as  to  good  fellowship  and 
teaching  capacity — and  laid  his  ambitions 
before  me.  He  told  me  what  mathematics 
he  must  learn  in  order  to  equip  himself  for 
his  chosen  career,  and  asked  me,  with  eyes 
eagerly  scanning  mine  for  the  real  answer, 
whether  I  thought  it  possible  for  him  to  mas 
ter  so  much  during  the  months  for  which  I 
had  been  appointed  to  the  school. 

I  asked  in  return  how  much  he  knew  of 
arithmetic  which,  I  explained  to  him,  was  the 
foundation  of  the  mathematical  superstruc 
ture  he  wished  to  build.  For  answer  he  said 
simply : 

"Try  me,  and  find  out  for  yourself." 
282 


The  Story  of  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

It  was  ten  o'clock  at  night,  and  I  was, 
by  invitation,  staying  over  night  in  his 
father's  house,  where  nine  o'clock  was  the 
customary  bedtime  for  everybody.  So  I 
answered  : 

"  I'll  examine  you  in  arithmetic  to-mor 


row." 


"  No,  do  it  now,  please,"  he  said.  "  I'm 
ready  for  all  night  and  I  can't  sleep  till  I 
know  about  it.  You  see  the  old  man  gives 
me  this  six  months  of  schooling,  and  he'll 
never  give  me  any  more.  So  I  want  to  know, 
just  as  quick  as  possible,  what  I  can  do." 

Seeing  the  young  man's  eagerness  for 
education,  and  sympathizing  with  it,  I  set  to 
work  at  once  to  test  his  knowledge  of  arith 
metic.  Before  midnight  I  told  him  he  was 
prepared  to  go  forward,  and  added  : 

"  I  can  teach  you  all  you  need  of  algebra, 
geometry  and  trigonometry,  within  the  next 
six  months,  if  you  aid  me  by  trying  very 
hard  to  learn.  I'll  gladly  do  my  part.  The 
rest  depends  upon  you." 
283 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

He  promised,  and  that  was  our  com 
pact.  Nothing  whatever  had  been  said  about 
school  government,  or  the  maintenance  of 
order,  but  I  soon  learned  by  observation 
that  Charley  G—  -  had  thought  out  all  that. 
He  wanted  to  learn ;  I  was  to  teach  him ;  he 
did  not  intend  that  any  school  trouble  should 
interfere  with  that  program.  A  day  or  two 
later  a  boy  tried  to  disturb  the  school  by 
drawing  his  pencil  over  his  slate  so  as  to 
make  it  squeak  in  a  nerve-distressing  way. 
I  rebuked  him.  Presently  he  did  it  again, 
and  I  again  admonished  him.  Five  minutes 
later  he  ventured  upon  a  third  offence.  Be 
fore  I  could  decide  what  to  do,  Charley 
G—  -  rose  quickly,  crossed  the  aisle,  seized 
the  offender's  ear  and  vigorously  twisted  it 
till  the  fellow  writhed  in  pain. 

"  You  heard  the  master,"  was  all  he  said. 

If  a  thunderbolt  had  entered  the  school 
room  there  could  not  have  been  greater 
astonishment.  Charley  G—  -  on  the  side 
of  the  master  !  And  even  helping  him  main- 

2Si 


The  Story  of  r'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

tain  discipline  and  order!  It  was  unbeliev 
able.  But  further  proof  of  it  came  quickly. 
There  was  a  little  fellow — the  smallest  in  the 
school — whose  quaint  ways  were  very  endear 
ing.  His  name  was  Ebenezer  Ledgerwood, 
but  he  was  called  u  Needy."  There  was  a 
hulking,  cowardly  brute  there,  whose  one 
employment  on  the  playground  seemed  to 
be  to  persecute  the  peculiarly  inoffensive 
and  lovable  child.  I  inflicted  severe  punish 
ments  of  my  own  devising  by  way  of  stop 
ping  this  brutality  of  persecution.  The 
more  I  punished  the  more  the  hulking  brute 
persecuted  the  helpless  little  fellow. 

Finally,  I  put  aside  all  my  prejudices 
against  corporal  punishment,  and  gave  the 
big  fellow  a  thrashing  with  a  stout  gad, 
promising  him  a  worse  one  if  he  should 
repeat  the  offence.  That  day  at  the  noon 
recess  the  fellow  set  to  work  to  "  take  it  out " 
of  Needy  Ledgerwood.  I  was  looking  and 
hearing  through  a  window  blind.  Charley 

G- was  at  the  bat  in  a  game  of  town-ball, 

28S 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

He  threw  down  the  bat,  seized  the  persecu 
tor,  and,  seating  himself  on  one  of  several 
bundles  of  shingles  that  had  been  left  lying 
around  when  the  new  school-house  was  fin 
ished,  turned  the  fellow  across  his  lap,  hold 
ing  him  by  the  nape  of  his  neck  and  pinion 
ing  his  legs  by  throwing  one  of  his  own 
across  them.  Then  he  called  for  shingles, 
and  they  were  quickly  brought  by  boys  who 
were  accustomed  to  do  Charley  G 's  bid 
ding.  These  shingles,  one  after  another,  he 
wore  out  as  implements  of  spanking,  until  a 
dozen  or  more  of  them  were  gone.  And 
that  the  spanking  was  effective  was  abun 
dantly  proved  by  the  howls  of  pain  it  called 
forth  from  the  victim.  Finally,  Charley 
G—  -  stood  the  fellow  up,  slapped  his  jaws 
with  a  vigor  that  suggested  the  possibility 
of  broken  bones,  and  then  releasing  him, 
said: 

"Now  take   a  hint   from   that.     I'll   do 
you  up  a  great  deal  wuss  next  time.     And 
don't  you  go  whining  to  the  master  about 
286 


The  Story  of  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

this.  If  you  do,  it'll  be  a  good  deal  wuss 
for  you.  I'm  a  takin'  this  here  job  off  the 
master's  hands." 

Screened  by  a  Venetian  blind,  I  had  seen 
and  heard  all  that  had  happened.  But  I 
thought  it  best  to  let  well  enough  alone,  so 
I  gave  no  sign  then  or  afterwards  that  I 
knew  anything  about  it.  But  I  had  no  fur 
ther  occasion  to  exercise  discipline  over  the 
boys  of  that  school.  They  quite  understood 
that  Charley  G—  -  was  "a  takin'  this  here 
job  off  the  master's  hands,"  and  they  ordered 
their  conduct  accordingly. 

The  girls  were  my  only  problem.  They, 

of  course,  had  no  fear  of  Charley  G 's 

big  fists,  and  they  were  disposed  to  defy  me. 
In  order  to  govern  them  I  took  a  leaf  out  of 
Mrs.  Dumont's  book.  I  put  them  on  their 
honor.  I  explained  to  them  that  of  course 
I  should  never  think  of  punishing  a  girl. 
That  would  be  unworthy  of  my  manhood. 
But  I  added  that  I  trusted  them  to  behave 
as  girls  should  who  expected  to  be  "ladies" 
287 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

after  a  while.  I  frankly  declared  that  if  they 
should  break  every  rule  and  disobey  every 
command,  my  instinct  of  courtesy  toward 
them,  as  girls  and  young  women,  would  for 
bid  me  to  attempt  any  sort  of  control. 

This  was  a  new  view  to  their  minds,  and 

» 

for  a  time  they  doubted  my  sincerity.  They 
tested  it  by  disobeying,  in  small  annoying 
ways,  but  finding  that  no  angry  outbreak  on 
my  part  followed,  they  at  last  settled  down 
to  the  belief  that  I  meant  what  I  had  said, 
and  finding  no  "fun"  in  baiting  a  teacher 
who  had  trusted  them  to  do  as  they  pleased, 
they  ceased  to  trouble  me.  I  think  that  a 
sense  of  honor  and  a  sort  of  public  opinion 
in  the  school  helped  a  good  deal  in  securing 
this  result.  It  was  felt  to  be  "  mean  "  to  dis 
obey  the  teacher  when  he  had  declared  that 
no  punishment  of  any  kind  should  be  meted 
out  to  the  disobedient,  and  each  girl  was 
conscious  of  the  fact  that  her  schoolmates, 
boys  and  girls  alike,  would  so  regard  her 
conduct  in  such  a  case. 

288 


The  Story  of  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

Much  that  was  humorous  occurred  in 
the  conduct  of  the  school,  particularly  the 
odd  doings  and  sayings  of  "Needy"  Led- 
gerwood,  who  afterwards  served  Edward  as 
a  model  in  his  portraiture  of  Shocky  in  "  The 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster." 

All  these  things  I  related  to  Edward  on 
my  weekly  visits  to  Madison,  for  I  usually 
went  home  on  Friday  afternoon  and  returned 
on  Monday  morning  in  time  for  school. 
Sometimes,  however,  I  remained  at  Riker's 
Ridge  over  Saturday,  in  order  to  help  Char 
ley  G ,  who  was  working  night  and  day 

over  his  mathematics.  He  worked  so  well 
and  with  so  much  intelligence  that  before  the 
period  of  my  school  teaching  ended,  he  had 
quite  fully  accomplished  his  ambition  and 
was  ready  to  enter  upon  the  learning  of  his 
trade  in  full  confidence  that  he  knew  enough 
of  the  mathematics  to  warrant  his  hope  of 
some  day  becoming  a  master  shipwright.  I 
hope  he  achieved  that  ambition,  though  I 
have  never  heard,  I  bear  him  in  friendly 
118 


The    First     of    The     Hoosiers 

remembrance,  not  only  because  of  the  way 
in  which  he  helped  me  to  govern  an  unruly 
school,  but  still  more  because  of  the  sturdy 
manliness  of  his  character,  and  the  unfalter 
ing  friendship  he  manifested  for  me. 

Let  me  skip  over  the  years  here  in  order 
to  show  what  things  of  vastly  more  import 
ance  grew  out  of  this  school-teacher  experi 
ence  of  my  own. 

Late  in  1871  Edward  resigned  from  the 
editorship  of  the  Independent,  and  presently 
undertook  the  not  very  hopeful  task  of  gal 
vanizing  a  moribund  weekly  periodical, 
Hearth  and  Home,  into  new  life.  That  paper 
had  been  established  by  the  advertising 
firm  of  Pettingill  &  Bates,  with  Donald  G. 
Mitchell  and  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  as  its 
editors,  and  that  most  gifted  of  juvenile 
writers,  Mrs.  Mary  Mapes  Dodge,  or  Mary 
E.  Dodge  as  she  then  wrote  the  name,  in 
charge  of  the  children's  department.  The 
publication  had  been  a  failure  almost  from 
the  beginning,  partly  perhaps  because  Mr, 
290 


The  Story  of  f'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster0 

Mitchell  and  Mrs.  Stowe  knew  little  or 
nothing  of  the  art  of  editing  a  newspaper, 
while  Mrs.  Dodge,  the  only  one  of  the  trio 
who  had  a  genius  for  such  work,  held  a  sub 
ordinate  instead  of  a  controlling  position. 

But  apart  from  that  Hearth  and  Home 
was  foredoomed  to  failure  because  of  a  mis 
directed  purpose.  It  was  meant  to  be  a 
country  gentleman's  periodical,  while  at  that 
time  there  were  almost  no  country  gentle 
men — in  the  sense  in  which  the  term  is  here 
used — in  America.  It  addressed  itself  largely 
to  a  class  which  at  that  time  scarcely  at  all 
existed,  though  it  is  fairly  numerous  now — 
the  leisure  class  that  amuses  itself  with  ex 
pensive  horticulture  for  pleasure  only,  rejoices 
in  greenhouses  and  gardens  of  exotic  plants, 
and  dallies  with  amateur  botany  in  the  same 
spirit  in  which  it  indulges  a  taste  for  litera 
ture  by  reading  the  best  magazines. 

The  mistake  was  soon  made  manifest  by 
the  failure  of  the    periodical    to    repay   the 
lavish    expenditures    of    its   publishers,  and 
291 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

presently  it  was  sold  to  Orange,  Judd  &  Co., 
publishers  of  the  American  Agriculturist.  Of 
the  original  editors  only  Mrs.  Dodge  re 
mained  in  its  service,  and  I  think  it  entirely 
just  to  say  that  it  was  only  the  exceeding 
charm  of  the  children's  department  which 
she  made,  that  had  enabled  the  paper  to  re 
tain  the  few  thousands  of  circulation  which 
it  had  when  Edward  Eggleston  took  edito 
rial  control  of  it. 

I  was  appointed  managing  editor  under 
him,  not  by  his  request,  for  he  detested 
nepotism,  and  the  appointment  was  not  one 
that:  I  needed  or  desired,  but  by  voluntary 
act  of  the  publishers,  who  thought  my  pres 
ence  as  his  lieutenant  would  free  his  mind  of 
many  worries  and  perhaps  in  other  ways  aid 
him  in  the  difficult  task  of  rescuing  the  paper 
from  its  slough  of  despond. 

That  task  was  one  of  very  great  per 
plexity.  "  First  of  all,"  I  remember  saying 
to  Edward,  uwe  must  find  out  what  is  the 
matter  with  the  paper." 

292 


The  Story  of  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

He  quickly  answered : 

"  Oh,  I  know  what's  the  matter.  With 
the  exception  of  Mrs.  Dodge's  admirable 
children's  pages,  all  that  is  is  wrong.  Write 
that  up  in  your  hat,  Geordie,  for  ready  refer 
ence.  We  must  change  everything  radically 
— everything  but  the  children's  pages.  There 
is  the  horticultural  department  now.  It  occu 
pies  several  pages  that  might  be  better  used 
in  other  ways.  I  want  you  to  kill  it,  not  by 
a  blow,  for  that  would  break  the  hearts  of 
the  publishers  and  shock  some  subscribers, 
perhaps,  but  kill  it  by  slow  suffocation.  In 
rearranging  the  make-up  I  want  you  to  put 
that  horticultural  section  between  two  sec 
tions  devoted  to  better  things ;  then  I  want 
you  to  expand  each  of  those  two  sections  so 
as  to  squeeze  the  horticulture  more  and  more 
each  week  till  nothing  is  left  of  it  except 
perhaps  a  picture  of  a  new  rhododendron 
or  chrysanthemum,  with  a  paragraph  of  de 
scriptive  text.  In  the  agricultural  depart 
ment,  I  wish  you  would  do  all  you  can  to 

293 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

discourage  the  portraits  of  plows  that  now 
stand  for  pictures  there,  and  in  the  house 
hold  department,  please  do  the  like  with 
skillets,  frying  pans  and  patent  egg-beaters. 
But  all  this  is  a  work  of  negation  and  elimi 
nation.  We  must  do  some  constructive 
work  at  once.  We  must  get  some  literature 
for  the  paper,  with  good  names  attached. 
I've  already  engaged  (here  he  named  a  num 
ber  of  popular  writers)  to  furnish  matter, 
and  you  must  be  constantly  on  the  lookout 
for  others.  You  must  get  some  good,  inter 
esting  descriptive  articles  that  will  lend  them 
selves  to  really  artistic  illustration,  and  then 
you  must  yourself  select  the  artists  to  illus 
trate  them.  The  art  superintendent — well, 
never  mind  that,  choose  the  artists  yourself. 
"Now  another  thing.  We  are  going  to 
print  some  stories  in  this  paper,  and  I  want 
you  to  get  some  good  ones — single  number, 
short  stories  mainly,  but  if  you  strike  a  really 
good  three-number  story,  take  it.  There'll 
be  a  howl  from  the  publishing  office,  of 

294 


EDWARD  EGGLESTON 
From  a   photograph   made  in  the  Century  Club,   New  York,  1896 


The  Story  of  f'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

course,  because  one  of  the  publishers  has 
always  taken  'high  moral  ground' — or  high 
immoral  ground,  whichever  it  is — against  all 
novels  and  stories.  Of  course  we  must  put 
stories  into  the  paper,  not  only  for  the  sake 
of  its  success,  but  because  the  story  is  the 
most  effective  of  all  literary  forms  in  teach 
ing  truth,  conveying  interesting  information 
and  uplifting  men's  minds  and  souls.  I 
sometimes  think  the  day  is  coming  when 
pretty  nearly  all  of  instruction  and  all  of  in 
spiring  thought  will  be  given  in  the  story 
form,  as  they  once  were  in  the  form  of  verse. 
Anyhow,  we  must  have  some  good  short 
stories  at  once,  and  presently  perhaps  we 
shall  print  a  novel  as  a  serial." 

It  will  scarcely  be  believed  of  many  in 
the  early  years  of  the  twentieth  century,  that 
so  late  as  the  end  of  the  third  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth,  there  still  survived  a  bitter  preju 
dice  against  novels  as  demoralizing  literature, 
and  that  even  short  stories  were  looked  upon 
with  doubt  and  suspicion.  Yet  even  in  1902 
295 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

— thirty  years  after  that  time — a  very  distin 
guished  clergyman  in  New  Jersey,  within 
half  an  hour's  ride  of  New  York,  was  bitterly 
assailed  by  members  of  his  church,  who 
sought  his  removal  from  the  pastorate  for 
the  sole  offence  of  having  done  some  noble 
literary  work,  including  a  novel  or  two.  The 
case  made  such  a  stir  that  the  metropolitan 
newspapers  gave  columns  to  an  account  of 
it,  and  to  the  discussion  of  it  which  fol 
lowed. 

To  us  who  were  grown  men  in  the  early 
seventies,  the  lapse  of  time  seems  very  short 
between  those  years  and  these,  but  in  fact  it 
covers  about  a  third  of  a  century  of  con 
stant  intellectual  broadening.  If  there  still 
are  some  in  the  twentieth  century  who  deem 
novel  writing  a  grave  breach  of  clerical 
ethics,  shall  we  feel  wonder  that  thirty  odd 
years  ago  there  were  many  who  frowned 
upon  fiction  as  a  thing  of  immoral  tendency, 
while  a  little  earlier  still,  novel  reading  was 
earnestly  denounced  from  many  pulpits,  and 

296 


The  Story  of  f'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

usually  classed  with  Sabbath-breaking  and 
sometimes  even  with  blasphemy? 

It  was  only  a  few  weeks  later,  and  while 
we  were  still  wrestling  with  the  problem  of 
how  to  lift  Hearth  and  Home  out  of  the  mire 
of  stagnation,  when  one  evening  about  ten 
o'clock,  Edward  came  to  my  house  full  of 
enthusiasm  over  a  project  he  had  formed. 

"Geordie,"  he  began  at  once,  "I  am 
going  to  write  a  three-number  story,  founded 
upon  your  experiences  at  Riker's  Ridge, 
and  call  it  'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster." 

Then  he  set  forth  his  theory  of  art — 
that  the  artist,  whether  with  pen  or  brush, 
who  would  do  his  best  work,  must  choose 
his  subjects  from  the  life  that  he  knows. 
He  cited  the  Dutch  painters,  and  justified 
his  choice  of  what  seemed  an  unliterary 
theme,  involving  rude  characters  and  a 
strange  dialect  perversion,  by  reference  to 
Lowell's  success  with  the  Biglow  papers. 

He  had  no  notion,  at  the  outset,  of 
making  more  than  a  three-number  story  of 

2(J7 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

"The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,"  and  he  wrote 
the  first  instalment  of  it  with  very  little,  if 
any,  notion  of  what  was  to  follow.  But  that 
first  instalment  achieved  instant  and  astonish 
ing  success.  I  think  I  never  knew  a  piece  of 
work  to  be  so  quickly  talked  about.  News 
stand  sales  increased  at  once,  and  new  sub 
scriptions  began  to  burden  every  mail. 
Many  newspapers  in  the  West  asked  and 
secured  permission  to  copy  the  story,  pub 
lishing  each  instalment  two  weeks  after  its 
appearance  in  Hearth  and  Home.  It  was 
deemed  good  advertising  policy  to  give  such 
permission  freely,  and  it  proved  to  be  so. 

Before  writing  the  second  instalment  the 
author  changed  his  plan,  enlarging  it.  Instead 
of  a  three-number  story,  he  decided  to  let  the 
tale  take  its  own  course  so  far  as  length  was 
concerned.  From  beginning  to  end  he  wrote 
the  story  with  the  printers  close  at  his  heels, 
each  instalment  appearing  in  print  before  the 
next  was  written,  and  sometimes  before  it 
was  begun. 

298 


The  Story  of  f'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

Ordinarily  this  would  be  an  unwise  and 
even  an  unsafe  way  of  producing  a  story, 
but  in  this  case  it  proved  quite  otherwise, 
chiefly  perhaps  because  the  author  knew  his 
subject  so  well  and  was  in  love  with  it. 

He  had  only  once  before  attempted 
fiction  for  grown  people,  and  that  only  in 
the  form  of  a  short  magazine  story.  How 
that  attempt  came  to  be  made  is  best  told 
in  a  letter  recently  written  to  me  by  Dr. 
Richard  Watson  Gilder,  editor  of  the  Cen 
tury  Magazine.  At  the  time  to  which  the 
letter  refers  Dr.  Gilder  was  Dr.  Holland's 
chief  editorial  assistant  in  the  conduct  of 
Scribner's  Monthly,  now  the  Century  Magazine, 
and  Edward  Eggleston  was  an  editor  of  the 
Independent,  and  a  contributor  of  critical 
articles  to  Scribner's  Monthly. 

Dr.  Gilder  writes : 

"  By  the  way,  I  remember,  as  if  it  were  yesterday,  the 
Friday  on  which  I  went  to  the  Independent  office  and  told 
Edward  that  I  would  stop  in  on  the  following  Monday  and 
get  from  him  a  Thanksgiving  story.  He  said  :  '  But  I  have 
never  written  stories  for  grown  up  people.'  I  said,  simply, 

299 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

'Monday  morning  I'll  be  here,'  and  when  I  called  on  Mon 
day  morning  he  handed  me  the  manuscript  of  '  Huldah,  the 
Help.'  This  was  an  immediate  success.  We  were  not  so 
particular  then  about  allowing  articles  to  be  copied,  and 
this  must  have  appeared  in  a  hundred  newspapers.  Its 
success,  I  think,  was  a  large  element  in  his  decision  to  write 
fiction  for  adults.  I  had  never  seen  any  child  stories  of  his, 
but  the  geniality  of  his  literary  criticisms,  which  we  were 
publishing  in  the  magazine,  convinced  me  that  he  had  it  in 
him  to  write  stories." 

Dr.  Gilder's  judgment  in  a  matter  of 
that  kind  was  that  of  an  expert,  as  his  re 
markable  success  in  the  conduct  of  his  maga 
zine,  and  especially  in  the  discovery  of  new 
writers  of  capacity  and  new  themes  for  maga 
zine  use,  has  since  abundantly  proved.  But 
he  was  at  that  time  a  rather  young  man,  en 
thusiastic,  optimistic  perhaps,  and  Edward's 
intimate  friend.  These  facts  prompted  Ed 
ward  to  take  Mr.  Gilder's  judgment  with  a 
good  deal  of  allowance  and  to  hesitate  before 
attempting  to  follow  up  the  success  achieved 
by  "Huldah,  the  Help, "with  other  ventures 
in  fiction. 

"That  success  is  not  conclusive,"  he  said 
to  me  one  day  when  I  referred  to  it  as  con- 
300 


The  Story  of  f'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

vincing.  "  It  may  have  been  accidental — a 
lucky  hit,  a  thing  that  happened  to  satisfy  a 
passing  fancy.  I  may  be  a  man  of  one  story 
— they  say  every  man  has  one  story  in  him." 

But  to  Mr.  Gilder's  urgency  and  mine 
there  was  presently  added  another,  which 
he  regarded  with  a  profounder  deference, 
namely  that  of  Charles  F.  Briggs — the 
"  Harry  Franco  "  to  whom  Lowell  had  dedi 
cated  "  The  Fable  for  Critics."  Mr.  Briggs 
was  at  that  time  an  old  man,  but  his  faculties 
were  still  unimpaired.  He  had  at  one  time 
been  famous  as  a  novelist  and  critic.  He 
had  ceased  to  write  novels,  and  only  now  and 
then  wrote  a  short  story.  But  his  critical 
acumen  was  never  so  great  or  his  critical 
judgment  so  sound  as  at  the  time  of  which 
I  am  writing. 

Referring  to  "  Huldah  "  and  its  success, 
Mr.  Briggs  told  Edward  very  earnestly  that 
he  must  write  novels.  Edward  replied  that 
he  had  no  confidence  in  his  fitness  to  under 
take  anything  so  ambitious,  particularly  as 
301 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

"  Huldah  "  was  absolutely  the  only  bit  of  fic 
tion  for  adults  he  had  ever  ventured  upon. 

"Nonsense,"  replied  Mr.  Briggs,  in  his 
pleasantly  dogmatic  way.  "Nonsense!  Any 
man  who  can  write  stories  for  children  can 
write  novels  successfully." 

Edward  .often  afterwards  said  that  it 
was  this  very  positive  judgment  of  the  vet 
eran  writer  which  led  him  to  think  seriously 
of  novel-writing  as  a  possible  career  for  him 
self,  and  when  the  occasion  for  writing  "The 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  arose,  his  mind  was 
so  well  used  to  the  idea  that  he  felt  no  shrink 
ing  from  the  task. 

The  success  of  "The  Hoosier  School 
master"  in  winning  circulation  to  Hearth  and 
Home  was  so  great  and  so  immediate,  that  the 
publishers  besought  its  author  to  go  on 
writing  stories  of  Western  life,  and  he  did 
so,  leaving  the  work  of  editing  to  his  man 
aging  editor,  and  after  awhile  surrendering 
his  post  of  editor  entirely,  leaving  me  to 
succeed  him.  All  that  will  be  recorded  later 
302 


The  Story  of  f'The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster*' 

in  this  volume.     At  present  we  have  to  do 
only  with  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster." 

When  the  serial  publication  was  ended 
it  was  decided  to  bring  the  story  out  in  book 
form.  But  an  unwise  economy  in  the  publi 
cation  office  forbade  its  proper  presentation. 
It  had  been  "set"  in  brevier  type  for  the 
newspaper — a  type  much  too  small  for  book 
use,  but  it  was  decided  to  save  the  cost  of 
resetting,  or  a  part  of  it,  by  "overrunning" 
the  lines — that  is,  transferring  the  type  from 
one  line  to  another  in  order  to  make  the  lines 
long  enough  for  book  page  use.  The  saving 
was  trifling,  and  the  result  of  it  was  that 
the  volume  was  a  thin,  uncomely  one,  with 
smaller  type  than  is  fit  for  use  in  a  book. 

In  spite  of  this  parsimonious  treatment, 
however,  the  popularity  of  the  book  was 
phenomenal,  its  sales  running  up  to  fifty 
thousand  copies  in  a  few  months,  and  con 
tinuing  year  after  year.  A  year  or  two  ago 
a  new  edition  was  made,  with  good  paper, 
proper  type  and  better  illustrations  than 
303 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

those  used  before,  and  in  this  worthier  dress 
the  book  continues  to  sell  like  a  new  and 
popular  novel,  nearly  a  third  of  a  century 
after  its  first  publication.  It  has  been  trans 
lated  into  Dutch,  Danish,  French  and  Ger 
man,  and  a  large  pirated  edition  has  been 
sold  in  England. 

Such  is  the  story  of  "The  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster."  It  is  proper  to  explain,  how 
ever,  that  while  the  original  impulse  to  write 
it  grew  out  of  my  boyish  experiences  as  a 
schoolmaster  on  Riker's  Ridge,  the  story  is 
indebted  to  those  experiences  for  nothing 
more  than  that  vague  suggestion,  but  is 
altogether  an  original  creation.  Riker's 
Ridge  was  not  Flat  Creek,  nor  did  it  in  any 
important  way  resemble  Flat  Creek.  Char- 
Icy  G—  -  and  Needy  Ledgerwood  did  in 
some  remote  degree  suggest  Bud  Means  and 
Shocky,  as  Edward  always  believed,  but  in 
neither  case  is  the  resemblance  close  enough 
to  suggest  the  most  distant  portraiture  or 
even  a  close  drawing  from  a  model. 
304 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

The  Minnesota  Preacher. 

T  the  time  of  Edward  Eggleston's 
return  to  Minnesota,  a  great  horde 
of  young  men  from  all  parts  of  the 
Union  were  hurrying  thither.  Their 
purpose  was  to  make  a  living  and  possibly 
to  achieve  fortune.  The  only  fortune  he 
sought  was  the  privilege  of  living,  the  abil 
ity  to  go  on  breathing  in  spite  of  the  condi 
tion  of  his  lungs.  Beyond  that  he  had  no 
hope  or  expectation,  no  desire,  even,  except 
to  do  well  and  faithfully  the  work  in  the  world 
to  which  he  believed  that  God  had  called 
him.  To  that  end  he  at  this  time  made  a 
great  renunciation.  From  boyhood  the  itch 
of  writing  had  been  strong  upon  him,  and 
during  the  six  months  of  his  ministry  in 
southern  Indiana  his  writings,  chiefly  for  the 
denominational  newspapers,  had  attracted 
305 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

wide  attention  by  their  vigor  of  utterance 
and  their  shrewd  insight  into  the  moving 
impulses  of  human  nature.  His  ambition 
to  become  a  writer  was  greatly  encouraged 
by  the  plaudits  of  his  elders,  whom  he  mod 
estly  regarded  as  his  betters,  as  well  as  by 
the  approval  of  readers  unknown  to  him 
personally.  But  the  thought  of  "  consecra 
tion  "  was  dominant  in  his  soul.  It  was  a 
doctrine  much  insisted  upon,  in  theory  at 
least,  among  the  Methodist  clergy  at  that 
time,  and  Edward  was  disposed  to  apply  it 
in  practice,  as  he  always  applied  every  con 
viction  of  duty  to  the  conduct  of  life.  He 
had  somewhere  read  the  story  of  a  young 
Catholic  monk,  whose  artistic  gift  was  so 
great  that  his  ecclesiastical  superior,  dis 
covering  it,  strenuously  sought  to  drive  him 
back  to  the  world,  offering  to  secure  his 
absolution  from  all  his  vows,  and  command 
ing  him  to  quit  the  cloister  and  exercise  the 
great  gifts  that  God  had  bestowed  upon  him. 
The  struggle  in  the  young  monk's  soul  was 
306 


The        Minnesota        Preacher 

a  terrible  one,  but  at  last,  according  to  the 
legend,  his  conscience  conquered.  He  de 
stroyed  his  pictures,  burned  his  brushes, 
emptied  his  paint  tubes,  and  resolutely  put 
ambition  behind  him  as  a  temptation  of  the 
devil. 

Without  for  a  moment  believing  him 
self  to  be  possessed  of  literary  genius,  Ed 
ward  Eggleston  had  definitely  found  out 
that  he  could  write  acceptably  for  print,  and 
the  ambition  to  do  so  was  strong  within  him. 
He  believed  it  to  be  a  temptation  of  the 
devil,  designed  to  impair  his  "  consecration," 
and  to  win  his  soul  away  from  God. 

This  view  was  very  generally  held  at 
that  time  and  for  long  afterward.  When 
"The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  was  in  the 
heyday  of  its  popularity,  one  of  Edward's 
former  mentors,  an  old  clergyman  of  high 
intelligence  and  considerable  culture,  wrote 
to  him  in  admiration  of  the  book,  but  ended 
by  admonishing  him  as  earnestly  as  Wolsey 
did  Cromwell  to  "fling  away  ambition." 
307 


The    First     of    The     Hoosiers 

"The  literary  life,"  he  wrote,  "is  tempting 
you,  I  fear,  to  your  destruction.  In  your 
very  success  I  scent  danger  for  your  soul. 
These  things  lead  away  from  God.  No  man 
can  serve  two  masters.  I  question  if  true 
consecration  is  compatible  with  the  literary 
work  you  are  doing." 

This  conviction  of  the  necessity  of  con 
secration  had  been  strong  in  Edward's  mind 
during  youth  and  early  manhood,  and  it  had 
exercised  a  decisive  influence  upon  his  career 
at  many  points.  His  extraordinary  subjec 
tion  to  his  own  conscience — a  subjection 
which  endured  to  the  end  of  his  life — led  him 
in  youth  to  govern  himself  resolutely  by 
teachings  which  most  others  accepted  in 
theory,  but  with  far  less  disposition  to  inter 
pret  them  literally  or  to  apply  them  rigidly 
to  personal  conduct.  Long  before  "The 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  was  written  Edward 
had  learned  to  interpret  his  own  duty,  not 
less  conscientiously  indeed,  but  with  a  broader 
understanding  of  what  his  duty  was,  so  that 
308 


The        Minnesota        Preacher 

in  doing  his  work  as  a  writer  he  felt  no  fear 
that  he  was  going  wrong.  But  during  his 
early  ministry  this  matter  sorely  troubled 
him.  He  not  only  restrained  the  impulse  to 
write,  but  when,  upon  occasion,  he  produced 
literary  work  that  he  thought  worthy,  he 
became  alarmed  over  the  pleasure  he  felt 
in  it,  and  resolutely  destroyed  his  manu 
script. 

"  It  was  just  as  well  so,"  he  used  to  say 
in  later  life. 

"  The  world  lost  nothing  by  the  destruc 
tion  of  those  manuscripts,  and  neither  did 
I.  Possibly  both  the  world  and  I  would 
have  profited  if  I  had  destroyed  many  others 
that  I  have  published  instead.*" 

I  was  not  personally  brought  into  con 
tact  with  the  life  in  Minnesota  at  that  time, 
and  I  cannot  presume  to  describe  it.  Nor 
is  it  necessary  that  I  should,  as  Edward's 
own  vivid  impressions  of  it  are  recorded  or 
reflected  in  the  novel  entitled  "The  Mystery 
of  Metropolisville." 

309 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

In  addition  to  the  young  men  who  at 
that  time  went  to  Minnesota  Territory  to 
win  fortunes  by  work  and  to  "  grow  up  with 
the  country,"  there  was  a  great  company  of 
speculators  there  who  wooed  fortune  in  less 
laborious  ways,  by  starting  what  we  have 
since  learned  to  call  "boom  towns"  and 
reaping  a  great  harvest  of  wealth  from  land 
speculation.  These  mapped  out  paper  cities 
with  pretentious  names,  put  forth  alluring 
prospectuses,  and  sold  corner  lots  out  on 
the  unbroken  prairie  at  fabulous  prices  to 
over-confiding  new  comers. 

A  little  while  earlier  the  total  popula 
tion  of  that  entire  region  had  been  less  than 
100,000  souls/  At  the  rate  of  immigration 
then  prevailing  it  was  confidently  predicted 
that  Minnesota  would  become  a  populous 
State  within  an  incredibly  brief  time.  It  was 
as  easy  as  reciting  the  multiplication  table 
or  the  alphabet,  to  show  the  new  comer  how 
certainly  vast  wealth  must  be  his  within  a 
year  or  two  if  he  had  sense  enough  to  invest 
310 


The        Minnesota        Preacher 

what  money  he  had  in  lots  in  this  or  that 
projected  "  city,"  for  the  present  covered 
with  prairie  grass,  but  destined  almost  im 
mediately  to  rival  St.  Louis  and  Chicago  in 
population,  wealth  and  business. 

Some  of  these  projectors  of  "cities" 
were  honest  visionaries,  deluded  by  their 
own  imaginings;  but  the  greater  number  of 
them  were  mere  gamblers  upon  the  credulity 
of  others.  Their  projects  were  greatly  aided 
by  the  operations  of  another  class  of  specu 
lators  who  were  busily  projecting  railroads 
in  every  direction,  and  so  vehemently  promis 
ing  the  early  construction  of  those  highways 
of  commerce  that  they  often  got  high  prices 
for  the  merest  "  tips"  as  to  the  course  which 
a  projected  railroad  was  to  follow,  or  a  con 
fidential  hint  as  to  where  a  "junction"  was 
to  be  located  and  the  prairie-grass  city  be 
come  a  great  railroad  centre. 

Behind  all  this  speculation  and  serving 
it  as  a  foundation  was  the  undoubted  fact 
that  Minnesota's  soil  and  climate  were  par- 
311 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

ticularly  well  adapted  to  wheat  growing  on  a 
magnificent  scale,  and  that  her  other  unde 
veloped  resources  were  many  and  great.  It 
was  certain  now  that  the  territory  must 
speedily  become  a  State,  and  that  its  agricul 
ture  was  destined  soon  to  make  the  State 
rich.  It  was  easy  to  exaggerate  all  this,  and 
it  was  exaggerated  by  the  speculators  to  such 
an  extent  that,  if  all  their  confident  prophe 
cies  had  been  fulfilled,  Minnesota  would  to 
day  be  the  most  populous  and  the  wealthiest 
State  in  the  Union.  To  the  unwary  at  that 
time  the  speedy  winning  of  great  riches 
seemed  to  depend  only  upon  foresight  in 
choosing  the  right  place  in  which  to  invest 
in  lots  that  already  bore  ridiculously  high 
prices.  To  such  foresight  the  projectors 
were  always  ready  to  help  the  new  comer  by 
nods  and  winks  and  confidential  "tips." 

Curiously  enough,  as  Edward  Eggles- 
ton  used  often  to  point  out,  in  the  midst  of 
a  vast  and  universal  speculation  which  par 
took  largely  of  the  nature  of  gambling,  and 

312 


The        Minnesota        Preacher 

often  of  "crooked"  gambling  at  that,  there 
was  never  any  prevalence  of  actual,  recog 
nized  gambling,  such  as  constituted  a  lead 
ing  feature  of  early  fortune-hunting  settle 
ments  elsewhere  in  the  West.  Roulette  and 
faro  did  not  flaunt  themselves  in  men's  faces 
in  the  Minnesota  of  those  early  days.  Saloons 
were  not  prominent  in  the  towns.  Drunken 
ness  was  rare,  and  it  was  never  the  habit  of 
men  there  to  make  walking  arsenals  of  them 
selves  and  to  L  o  about  playing  the  role  of 
braggarts  and  ruffians.  Crimes  of  violence 
were  no  more  frequent  in  that  newly-peopling 
region  than  in  old  and  well-ordered  commu 
nities. 

These  conditions  are  faithfully  reflected 
in  the  one  novel  Edward  Eggleston  devoted 
to  early  life  in  Minnesota,  and  his  explana 
tion  of  them  was  partly  by  reference  to  the 
character  of  the  immigration  that  peopled 
Minnesota,  coming  as  it  did  largely  from 
New  England  and  the  older  States  of  the 
middle  West,  and  partly  by  the  shrewd  sug- 

313 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

gestion  that  the  lawlessness  and  violence  in 
other  pioneer  communities  have  been  greatly 
exaggerated  for  the  sake  of  picturesqueness, 
by  those  who  have  written  of  them. 

Yet  in  the  Minnesota  of  that  time  the 
young  Methodist  preacher  found  need  enough 
for  his  ministry  and  occasion  enough  for  all 
his  zeal. 

He  began  his  work  there  in  the  re 
moter  regions  along  the  Minnesota  River — 
"the  frontier  of  the  frontier,"  he  called  it. 
His  congregations  were  composed  about 
equally  of  Indians,  white  settlers,  hunters, 
trappers  and  half-breed  voyageurs.  His  cir 
cuit  covered  a  vast  area,  over  which  he 
traveled  on  foot,  winter  and  summer,  shod 
in  Indian  moccasins,  and  living  out  of  doors 
almost  as  continually  as  the  Indians  them 
selves  did. 

His  zeal  in  the  work  presently  attracted 

the   attention  of  the  church  authorities,  and 

his    abilities    strongly    commended    him    to 

them.      Before   he  wras  twenty-one  years  of 

314 


The        Minnesota        Preacher 

age — he  had  married  at  twenty — he  was 
placed  in  charge  of  one  of  the  largest 
churches  in  St.  Paul,  the  capital  and  chief 
city  of  the  newly-admitted  State.  He  was 
afterwards  stationed — in  accordance  with  the 
itinerant  system — successively  in  St.  Peter's 
Stillwater  and  Winona.  Often  he  fell  ill, 
and  was  unable  to  accept  a  pastoral  appoint 
ment. 

Once,  on  the  occasion  of  an  Indian  out 
break,  he  enlisted  in  the  volunteers,  mounted 
his  horse  and  set  out  to  help  defend  the 
border.  In  later  life  he  was  fond  of  telling, 
in  an  amused  way,  of  how  this  soldiering 
episode  ended  for  him.  After  a  long  and 
hurried  march,  which  the  frail  youth  endured 
only  by  making  heavy  drafts  upon  his  in 
domitable  spirit,  the  commander  of  his  com 
pany  came  to  him  and  said: 

"  Parson,    you're    a    good    fellow,    but 

you're    not    strong    enough    for    a    soldier. 

Now,  I've  got  more  men  than  horses  here, 

and  I  want  you  to  quit  as  a  man  and  let  me 

315 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

nave  your  horse  for  a  strong  young  fellow 
to  ride." 

Edward  agreed  to  an  arrangement  so 
obviously  for  the  good  of  the  service,  though 
humiliating  to  himself.  He  turned  his  steed 
over  to  the  "  strong  young  fellow,"  and  set 
out  to  walk  back  to  the  settlements.  "Thus 
ingloriously,"  he  used  to  say,  "did  my  mili 
tary  experience  end.  I  don't  know  whether 
I  was  'honorably  discharged'  or  not,  but  I 
suppose  it  amounted  to  that,  as  the  State 
afterwards  voluntarily  paid  me  for  my 
horse." 

During  the  nine  years  of  his  life  in 
Minnesota  Edward  made  much  of  intellec 
tual  growth.  Wherever  he  went  and  what 
ever  the  condition  of  his  health  might  be  he 
carried  on  his  studies  with  tireless  industry 
and  dogged  persistence,  ceaselessly  pursuing 
that  systematic  self-instruction  to  which  he 
was  indebted  all  his  life  for  his  education. 
During  this  time  he  read  voluminously,  in 
general  literature  and  philosophy,  in  several 

313 


The        Minnesota        Preacher 

languages.  Little  by  little,  too,  he  outgrew 
the  narrowness  of  view  that  had  led  him 
to  suspect  his  writing  impulse  as  an  in 
stigation  of  the  devil.  He  wrote  a  good 
deal  now  and  published  a  little,  for  he  had 
grown  keenly  self-critical  in  his  literary 
work. 

Very  naturally  his  writing  at  that  time 
was  chiefly  on  more  or  less  religious  subjects  ; 
but  by  the  year  1866  he  had  begun  to  write 
occasionally  for  secular  periodicals,  particu 
larly  The  Little  Corporal,  a  very  widely  circu 
lated  juvenile  paper,  published  in  Chicago. 
So  marked  was  his  success  in  this  work,  that 
when,  in  that  year,  his  greatly  impaired 
health  compelled  him  to  give  up  the  ministry, 
he  was  invited  to  become  associate  editor  of 
The  Little  Corporal.  He  finally  quitted  Min 
nesota  and  removed  to  Evanston,  a  suburb 
of  Chicago,  where  he  purchased  the  queerly 
constructed  house  shown  in  the  illustration, 
making  it  his  home  for  several  years  after 
wards. 

317 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

The  Editor  and  the  Man  of  Letters. 

IS  removal  to  Evanston  in  the  spring 
of  1866  may  be  said  to  mark  the 
beginning  of  Edward  Eggleston's 
career  as  a  secular  writer.  It  also 
marked  the  end  of  his  life  as  a  Methodist 
minister;  for  while  he  retained  his  standing 
in  the  Minnesota  Conference  for  several 
years  afterwards,  he  never  again  accepted  an 
"appointment"  at  the  hands  of  his  Bishop. 
And,  except  for  his  five  years'  pastorate  of 
the  wholly  independent  and  creedless  Church 
of  Christian  Endeavor,  in  Brooklyn,  some 
years  later — an  episode  of  which  a  fuller  ac 
count  will  be  given  in  a  subsequent  chapter 
— he  never  again  had  charge  of  a  church  of 
any  kind. 

While    editorially   connected   with    The 
Little  Corporal  Edward  gained  a  considerable 
318 


The     Editor    and    the     Man    of    Letters 

reputation  as  a  writer  for  children.  It  was  at 
that  time  that  he  wrote  for  his  paper  the 
widely  popular  series  of  "Chicken  Little 
Stories,"  and  other  tales  for  children,  after 
wards  collected  and  published  as  "The  Book 
of  Queer  Stones."  In  18G9,  while  these 
stories  were  still  running  in  the  paper,  he 
brought  out  his  first  book,  a  tender  little 
tale  for  children,  entitled  "  Mr.  Blake's 
Walking  Stick."  It  was  immediately  suc 
cessful,  and  to  this  day — nearly  thirty-five 
years  after  its  publication — it  remains  a  favor 
ite  among  the  little  folk. 

The  attractiveness  of  these  books  for 
young  children  is  due  to  a  certain  rollicking 
good  fellowship  which  runs  through  them, 
and  to  that  never-failing  sympathy  with 
childhood  which  was  always  a  dominant 
trait  of  their  author's  character.  Even  after 
he  grew  prematurely  old  in  physique,  Ed 
ward  Eggleston  never  saw  a  child  without 
making  love  to  it,  and  quickly  winning  its 
heart  in  return.  He  had  no  touch  or  trace 
319 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

of  forbidding  dignity  when  talking  with  chil 
dren.  He  never  talked  down  at  them,  but 
made  himself  always  their  companion,  and 
spoke  to  them  with  spiritual  eyes  on  a  level 
with  their  own.  He  held  that  one  should 
make  a  playmate,  not  a  plaything  of  the  child, 
and  he  did  so  himself  with  a  sincerity  that 
never  failed  of  its  purpose.  Indeed,  there 
was  always  much  of  the  sound-hearted  boy 
in  him  to  the  end,  even  when  he  was  not 
dealing  with  children.  It  was  exceedingly 
winning. 

In  1867  he  took  upon  himself,  in  addi 
tion  to  his  work  on  The  Little  Corporal,  the 
chief  editorship  of  The  National  Sunday  School 
Teacher.  That  periodical  was  the  outgrowth 
and  exponent  of  the  great  and  highly  organ 
ized  Sunday  School  movement  which  at  that 
time  interested  the  entire  country,  and  in 
which  John  Wanamaker,  Dwight  L.  Moody 
and  others  were  Edward  Eggleston's  enthusi 
astic  fellow  workers.  He  was  also  active  as 
a  leader  and  effective  as  a  speaker,  in  the 

320 


The     Editor    and     the     Man     of    Letters 

Sunday  School  Institutes  and  conventions 
which  were  then  so  largely  attended  in  all 
parts  of  the  country. 

All  this  while  he  was  writing  a  good 
deal  for  a  leading  daily  newspaper  in  Chicago, 
and  thus  acquiring  a  trenchant  editorial 
style  which  served  him  well  in  later  years. 

More  important,  so  far  as  his  own 
career  was  concerned,  is  the  fact  that  about 
1869  he  became  general  western  correspon 
dent  of  the  New  York  Independent,  writing 
over  the  signature  of  "  Penholder."  In  that 
seething  time  of  new  adjustments  in  politi 
cal  affairs,  and  new  thought  in  statesmanship, 
theology  and  philosophy,  the  Independent  was 
a  notable  force.  It  was  owned  by  Henry 
C.  Bowen,  and  edited  by  Theodore  Tilton, 
with  Oliver  Johnson,  Charles  F.  Briggs,  Dr. 
William  Hayes  Ward,  Dr.  Joshua  Leavitt 
and  other  strong  men  on  its  staff,  while  at 
every  point  of  importance  its  correspondents 
were  selected  men  of  the  highest  intellectual 
quality. 

321 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

Edward  Eggleston's  work  as  a  corre 
spondent  attracted  the  attention  of  Mr. 
Bowen  and  Mr.  Tilton,  and  in  May,  1870, 
they  invited  him  to  join  the  staff  of  the 
paper  as  Book  Editor  and  editorial  writer. 
Accepting  the  place  he  removed  to  Brook 
lyn.  He  entered  upon  his  new  work  with  con 
science  and  enthusiasm,  and  his  health  being 
now  good,  he  brought  all  of  his  superb 
energy  to  bear  upon  it. 

During  the  next  year  Theodore  Tilton 
fell  into  controversy  with  the  proprietor  of 
the  paper.  The  trouble  grew  indirectly  out 
of  the  unfortunate  affair  between  Tilton  and 
Henry  Ward  Beecher.  That  matter  had 
not  yet  come  to  a  head,  but  it  had  begun  to 
color  all  of  Tilton's  thought  and  to  influence 
all  his  conduct.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to 
revive  here  a  scandal  that  without  doubt 
served  for  the  time  being  gravely  to  impair 
the  morals  of  a  community  in  which  it  was 
daily  and  hourly  discussed,  even  before  it 
got  into  the  courts  and  the  newspapers.  I 

322 


The    Editor    and    the     Man    of    Letters 

mention  it  only  because  it  is  necessary  to  do 
so  in  explanation  of  what  occurred. 

Theodore  Tilton  was  always  a  radical  of 
radicals.  It  was  he  who  wrote  in  a  pros 
pectus  that  the  Independent  would  be  "as 
radical  as  truth  and  justice  can  make  it." 
During  the  anarchistic  reign  of  the  Com 
mune  in  Paris  after  the  Franco-Prussian 
War,  he  openly  advocated  the  cause  of  the 
Commune,  and  even  after  all  the  facts  of  its 
riotous  career  were  known,  he  ceaselessly 
defended  it — not  apologizing  for  its  deeds 
of  violence,  arson  and  homicide,  but  justify 
ing  them  as  the  righteous  proceedings  of 
liberty-loving  men  fighting  against  privilege 
and  oppression. 

His  thinking  was  equally  extreme  on 
other  subjects  and  his  utterance  was  daring  to 
the  limit  of  audacity.  I  knew  him  well  at  that 
time.  I  was  associated  with  him  in  the  editor 
ship  of  a  daily  newspaper  which  he  con 
ducted  while  yet  editing  the  Independent.  I 
greatly  liked  him  for  his  liberal  qualities, 
323 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

and,  in  common  with  all  who  knew  him,  ad 
mired  his  extraordinary  brilliancy  of  intellect. 
I  saw  much  of  him,  in  the  office  and  in  his 
home,  and  he  often  consulted  me  with  re 
spect  to  his  troubled  personal  affairs. 

In  answer  to  his  demands  I  frequently 
gave  him  what  I  believe  to  have  been  good 
advice.  He  never  followed  it,  but  in  this 
close  personal  contact  I  learned  to  know, 
better  than  most,  what  his  mood  was,  and 
by  that  mood  he  was  governed  in  nearly 
everything  that  he  did.  It  was  the  mood  of 
Sampson  when  he  pulled  the  pillars  down, 
and  under  its  impulse  he  wrote  and  printed 
many  articles  in  the  Independent  which  awak 
ened  apprehension.  Finally,  on  October  1, 
1870,  he  wrote  one  which  both  shocked  and 
alarmed  the  proprietor  of  the  Independent 
and  its  readers.  The  editorial  in  question 
was  entitled  "  Love,  Marriage  and  Divorce," 
and  was  obviously  the  outcome  of  his  brood 
ing  over  his  own  domestic  relations.  A  pas 
sage  in  it  ran  as  follows : 
324 


The     Editor    and     the     Man    of    Letters 

"  The  Divine  moralist  who  preached  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  when  He  said  '  Be  ye  therefore  perfect,  even  as  your 
Father  in  Heaven  is  perfect,'  held  up  an  ideal  of  human 
character  impossible  of  mortal  attainment  -  the  despair  of 
flesh-clogged  souls.  In  like  manner,  in  the  few  and  frag 
mentary  notes  which  his  biographers  have  saved  of  his  utter 
ances  on  marriage,  he  holds  up  an  ideal,  the  highest  ever 
conceived — beautiful  to  struggle  after,  but  impossible  to  at 
tain.  He  did  not  rest  marriage  on  the  mere  legal  union  of 
two  persons  whom  the  law,  uniting,  enacts  to  be  one  flesh  ; 
but,  transcending  this  lie  and  hallowing  it,  he  taught  a 
spiritual  union  which  should  be  so  subtle  in  its  willing  bond, 
so  exclusive  in  its  mutual  allegiance  and  so  reverent  of  its 
married  mate  that  the  brief  indulgence  of  a  single  vagrant 
fancy  was  an  infidelity  to  such  wedlock. 

"Who  can  abide  this  test  ?  Judged  by  so  immaculate 
a  morality  '  there  is  none  good,  no  not  one.'  ' 

Having  thus  suggested  the  futility  of 
Christ's  teaching,  and  the  uselessness  of  all 
strivings  to  obey  it,  the  article  argued  that, 
with  human  nature  what  it  is,  the  teachings 
of  the  Divine  moralist  justify  divorce  in  the 
case  of  that  lesser  and  lower  marriage  to 
which  alone,  as  Tilton  contended,  human 
beings  can  attain. 

The  reckless  audacity  of  this  utterance, 
together  with  other  things,  precipitated  the 
crisis  that  had  long  been  drawing  near.  Two 
325 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

weeks  after  its  publication  Theodore  Tilton 
ceased  to  be  editor  of  the  Independent,  and 
Edward  Eggleston  was  chosen  to  succeed 
him  in  that  office. 

Edward's  contract  of  employment  as 
editor-in-chief  of  the  Independent  was  for  a 
term  of  years,  and  he  entered  upon  the 
work  with  a  feeling  that  at  last  his  oppor 
tunity  in  life  had  come  to  him.  He  had 
control  of  the  tools  with  which  high  aspira 
tions  of  service  to  his  time  and  country  and 
to  humanity,  might  be  wrought  into  high 
achievements.  The  Independent  was  one  of  the 
greatest  and  most  influential  organs  of  opin 
ion  in  all  the  land.  Its  province  embraced 
the  whole  field  of  thought  and  affairs.  It 
dealt  with  politics,  religion,  literature  and  art, 
all  with  a  strong  hand.  In  each  its  control 
afforded  to  a  strong  man  an  enviable  oppor 
tunity  to  impress  his  convictions  upon  men 
in  a  way  to  give  them  effect,  and  with  the 
assistance  of  such  a  staff  of  other  strong  men 
as  he  had  working  with  him,  it  would  be 
326 


The    Editor    and     the     Man     of    Letters 

difficult  to  imagine  a  position  more  alluring 
to  a  man  of  Edward's  gifts  and  temperament. 

But  after  seven  months  in  the  place  a 
difference  of  opinion  arose  between  him  and 
the  owner  of  the  paper  as  to  the  political 
course  it  should  pursue  in  a  certain  crisis, 
and,  as  the  question  was  one  involving  his 
conscience,  Edward  asked  and  secured  the 
privilege  of  resigning  without  waiting  for 
the  expiry  of  the  six  months'  notice  which 
the  contract  required  him  to  give. 

It  scarcely  needs  saying  that  the  neces 
sity  of  doing  this  was  a  sore  disappointment 
to  hopes  which  had  been  exceedingly  dear 
to  him.  But  on  a  point  of  conscience  he 
had  never  been  accustomed  to  falter,  and  he 
did  not  falter  now.  He  abandoned  a  posi 
tion  which  was  ideally  well  adapted  to  his 
purposes  and  aspirations.  He  surrendered 
what  he  regarded  as  the  greatest  opportu 
nity  likely  ever  to  come  to  him  and  retired 
to  his  Brooklyn  home  to  await  such  further 
opportunities  as  life  might  offer. 

327 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

These  were  not  long  in  coming.  His 
reputation  as  an  editor  had  been  fully  made, 
and  as  soon  as  it  became  known  that  he 
was  foot-loose,  the  publishers  of  Hearth  and 
Home  approached  him  with  an  offer  which 
he  presently  accepted. 

Then  followed  the  struggle  referred  to 
in  a  former  chapter,  to  rescue  the  paper 
from  its  moribund  condition.  This  he  did 
in  the  only  way  in  which  it  could  be  done, 
namely  by  improving  the  character  of  the 
paper.  He  began  by  ridding  it  of  every 
incapable  who  had  been  clinging,  barnacle- 
like,  to  its  staff,  and  putting  better  men  in 
their  places.  Recognizing  Mrs.  Dodge's  re 
markable  gifts,  he  insisted  upon  giving  her 
a  freer  hand  than  she  had  ever  been  allowed 
before,  especially  in  the  way  of  wise  expen 
diture  for  good  matter  and  good  pictures. 
Process  picture  making  was  unknown  then. 
Every  illustration  must  be  drawn  on  wood 
and  engraved  by  hand,  so  that  illustration 
was  expensive.  But  Edward  insisted  that 

328 


The     Editor    and     the     Man     of    Letters 

no  economy  should  be  permitted  to  inter 
fere  with  the  execution  of  Mrs.  Dodge's 
plans  for  her  department.  Indeed,  he  set 
his  face  against  all  economies  that  might  in 
any  way  interfere  with  the  supreme  purpose 
of  making  the  paper  successful  by  making 
it  worthy  of  success.  I  remember  that,  after 
I  became  his  managing  editor,  and  reported 
that  I  found  in  my  possession  a  great  mass 
of  accepted  manuscripts,  mostly  the  work  of 
amateurs — a  legacy  from  the  former  admin 
istration — he  bade  me  go  through  them, 
throwing  out  every  one  that  in  the  least  fell 
short  of  the  new  standard  he  had  set  up.  I 
reminded  him  that  the  publishers  were  under 
obligation  to  pay  for  all  articles  already  ac 
cepted.  His  reply  was  quick  and  resolute: 
"  Report  them  for  payment.  Then  throw 
them  into  your  waste  paper  basket.  It  is 
bad  enough  to  have  to  pay  for  such  stuff;  it 
would  be  calamitous  to  print  it.  We  can't 
afford  to  print  a  single  unworthy  article,  at 
least  until  we  have  printed  enough  of  the 

329 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

best  to  give  the   paper   a   character   and   a 
reputation." 

As  editor  of  the  Independent,  and  in  other 
relations,  he  had  long  been  in  close  touch 
with  pretty  nearly  all  the  writers  in  the  coun 
try  who  might  be  made  available,  and  he 
personally  saw  or  wrote  to  all  of  them. 
Thus,  in  a  brief  time  he  drew  into  the 
paper's  service  a  staff  of  capable  writers, 
many  of  them  widely  known.  He  charged 
me  in  the  meanwhile  to  be  always  keenly  on 
the  lookout  for  new  writers  of  capacity. 
"The  best  thing  an  editor  can  do  for  his 
publication,"  he  said,  "is  to  develop  a  new 
writer,  and  let  him  make  his  name  in  connec 
tion  with  the  paper." 

One  of  our  "finds"  at  this  time  was 
very  notable.  As  the  Christmas  season 
approached,  we  found  ourselves  short-handed, 
and  sought  for  some  one  to  help  us  out. 
We  found  him  in  Philadelphia.  He  had 
been  engaged  in  newspaper  work  for  several 
years,  and  was  familiar  with  methods,  princi- 

330 


The     Editor    and     the     Man     of    Letters 

pies  and  details.  But  he  had  attained  to  no 
editorial  position  sufficiently  attractive  to 
forbid  his  acceptance  of  the  offer  Edward 
made  him  for  a  temporary  engagement  on 
Hearth  and  Home.  He  came  to  us  to  do 
general  utility  work.  He  was  a  modest,  un 
assuming  man,  but  not  lacking  in  that  suffi 
cient  self-confidence  which  prompts  and  en 
ables  strong  men  to  do  capable  work. 

His  name  was  Frank  R.  Stockton. 

He  had  not  been  with  us  a  week  before 
Edward  had  discovered  his  quality,  and 
changed  his  very  temporary  engagement 
into  a  permanent  one.  He  remained  with 
us  until,  upon  the  establishment  of  St. 
Nicholas,  he  went  with  Mrs.  Dodge,  to  assist 
in  making  the  really  wonderful  success  which 
that  periodical  so  quickly  achieved.  His 
later  career  as  one  of  the  foremost  and  most 
popular  writers  of  his  time,  is  known  to  all 
who  read  or  care  for  books. 

Edward  followed  "The  Hoosier  School 
master"  with  "The  End  of  the  World  "- 

331 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

another  memory  of  the  Hoosier  life  as  he 
had  known  it  in  boyhood.  In  it  he  dealt 
somewhat  with  that  strange  episode  in  the 
religious  life  of  the  country,  the  Millerite 
craze.  He  had  himself  seen  all  this  in  his 
boyhood.  He  remembered  with  what  fanatic 
faith  men  accepted  guess-work  interpreta 
tions  of  the  peculiarly  incomprehensible 
prophecies  of  Daniel;  how  the  leaders  of 
that  movement  worked  out  from  Daniel's 
figures  the  very  day  on  which  the  end  of  the 
world  was  to  come,  and  proved  it  all  as  they 
might  have  proved  any  other  "sum"  in 
arithmetic.  He  remembered  how  busily  be 
lieving  women  toiled  to  get  their  white  ascen 
sion  robes  ready  in  time ;  how  recklessly 
men  left  their  fields  untilled  in  anticipation 
of  the  coming  day  of  judgment;  how  crazily 
men  and  women  became  excited  as  the  ap 
pointed  time  drew  near,  some  of  them 
actually  going  mad;  and  how  shrewdly 
sharpers  played  upon  credulity  and  bought 
for  a  trifle  the  possessions  of  the  deluded 
332 


EDWARD  EGGLESTON 
In   Madison,   Indiana    January  1899 


The     Editor     and    the     Man    of    Letters 

ones.  He  remembered,  as  I  do,  the  table 
oil-cloths,  covered  with  "the  figures  of 
prophecy,"  which  some  manufacturer  was 
enterprising  enough  to  put  upon  a  market 
eager  for  them,  and  which  remained  in  prac 
tical  domestic  use  long  after  the  excitement 
that  had  made  them  marketable  died  out. 
It  is  a  pity  that  nobody  at  that  time  was  far- 
seeing  enough  to  preserve  one  of  those  oil 
cloths  as  a  historic  curiosity.  Nobody  seems 
to  have  done  so,  however,  as  Edward's  offer 
of  a  hundred  dollars  for  a  single  specimen, 
though  long  continued  and  widely  advertised, 
brought  no  response. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Edward  that  he 
regarded  even  this  credulity  and  fanaticism 
with  respect,  as  he  looked  back  upon  that  time 
and  made  literary  use  of  it.  In  our  parents' 
house  he,  as  a  boy  of  five  or  six  years  old, 
heard  nothing  but  contempt  and  ridicule  for 
the  craze  while  it  was  in  progress.  Our 
father  would  not  permit  the  subject  to  be 
seriously  discussed  in  the  presence  of  his 

333 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

family.  Our  mother  used  smilingly  to  ridi 
cule  the  folly  of  making  ascension  robes  out 
of  cotton  cloth  that  cost  a  few  cents  a  yard. 
And  when  she  found  that  one  in  whom  she 
felt  any  interest  had  been  infected  by  the 
insanity,  she  would  gently  set  forth  a  higher 
conception  of  God's  ways  and  purposes 
than  that  which  the  doings  and  teachings  of 
the  Millerites  implied.  Yet  in  his  mature 
years  Edward  always  insisted  upon  regarding 
the  human  weakness  which  rendered  such  a 
fanaticism  possible,  with  respectful  pity 
rather  than  with  contempt.  In  "  The  End  of 
the  World"  he  laughed,  indeed,  at  the  follies 
it  involved;  but  he  said: 

"The  intellectual  attitude  of  those  peo 
ple,  if  it  can  be  called  an  intellectual  atti 
tude,  was  entirely  logical.  If  a  man  believes 
in  prophecy  at  all,  he  must  believe  that  it  is 
intended  to  let  men  know  what  is  going  to 
happen.  If  the  prophecies  of  the  Old  Tes 
tament  were  inspired  revelations  of  the  future, 
as  nearly  everybody  at  that  time  believed, 

334 


The     Editor    and     the     Man     of    Letters 

the  Power  that  inspired  them  must  have  in 
tended  men  to  find  out  what  they  meant. 
The  Millerites  believed  that  their  leader  had 
found  this  out,  and  they  studied  his  inter 
pretation  only  to  find  it  so  plausible  that 
their  minds  could  find  no  flaw  in  it.  They 
were  more  logical  and  more  consistent  than 
the  clergymen  who  preached  against  their 
delusion.  After  all,  perhaps  the  fundamental 
mistake  lay  in  believing  in  prophecy,  but  that 
mistake,  if  it  is  a  mistake,  was  made,  not  by 
the  Millerites  only,  but  equally  by  those  who 
opposed  their  doctrine." 

It  was  always  Edward  Eggleston's  habit 
to  think  honestly  and  fearlessly.  If  in  his 
youth  his  views  had  been  narrow  and  puri 
tanical,  it  was  only  because  there  were  no 
other  views  possible  under  the  circumstances 
in  which  he  was  placed,  to  one  who  thought 
honestly  and  resolutely  accepted  that  which 
he  believed  to  be  truth,  making  obedience 
to  it  the  unfaltering  rule  of  his  life,  no  mat 
ter  at  what  cost  of  self-restraint  and  self- 
335 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

sacrifice.  He  was  taught  that  the  Bible  was 
unquestionably  the  one  only  revelation  of 
God's  thought  to  man.  The  only  form  in 
which  he  knew  the  Bible  in  his  boyhood  was 
the  accepted  English  version,  and  he  was 
taught  to  take  that  literally.  The  absolutely 
necessary  result  of  such  teaching  to  a  boy 
of  his  character,  was  asceticism,  puritanism — 
something  akin  in  spirit  to  monasticism  in 
its  least  enlightened  forms. 

But  it  was  equally  inevitable  that  a  mind 
such  as  his,  exercising  itself  in  absolute  obe 
dience  to  a  conscience  that  loved  truth  above 
all  else,  should  outgrow  these  trammels  of 
the  intellect  and  shake  them  off. 

At  the  time  of  which  I  am  now  writing 
Edward  had  done  this  in  a  very  great  de 
gree.  He  had  grown  liberal.  His  enlarged 
knowledge  had  given  him  better  points  of 
view.  His  habit  of  looking  with  open  eyes 
in  his  search  for  truth,  had  enabled  him  to 
make  the  most  of  those  points  of  view. 
His  extensive  reading,  in  literature,  philoso- 
333 


The    Editor    and    the     Man    of    Letters 

phy  and  history,  had  taught  him  new  prin 
ciples  of  interpretation.  His  large  and 
varied  contact  with  men  of  every  kind  and 
class,  from  the  trapper  and  half-breed  on  the 
frontier  to  the  finest  scholars  and  thinkers 
of  his  time,  had  enlarged  his  conceptions, 
not  only  of  human  kind,  but  of  human  life 
and  its  relations. 

One  other  fact  must  be  considered. 
The  liberalization  of  thought  and  the  en 
largement  of  knowledge  which  he  shared, 
were  not  his  alone,  but  the  common  posses 
sion  of  all  men  who  were  accustomed  to 
think.  He  was  living  in  a  more  enlightened 
time  than  that  of  his  boyhood.  Even  in 
those  regions  in  which  his  childhood  had 
been  passed,  the  schoolmaster  and  the  news 
paper,  and  the  circulating  library,  had  been 
doing  their  work  and  doing  it  well.  The 
narrow  teachings  that  had  been  drilled  into 
him  in  boyhood  were  no  longer  heard  any 
where  in  the  land.  The  harsh  rigidity  of 
life  had  been  relaxed  during  that  wonderful 
337 


The    First     of    The     Hoosiers 

quarter  of  a  century  since  he  had  first  gone 
to  school. 

In  theology  Edward  had  grown  both 
liberal  and  unsettled  as  to  his  beliefs — a 
change  which  was  destined  to  be  progres 
sive  and  continuous.  He  was  still  religious 
by  habit  and  sentiment,  but  all  dogmatism 
had  gone  out  of  him.  He  was  tolerant  of 
everything  but  intolerance,  and  he  was  gen 
erously  disposed  even  to  look  upon  that 
with  pity  rather  than  condemnation  in  his 
mind. 

He  still  retained  his  membership  in 
the  Minnesota  Conference,  partly  from  a 
feeling  of  good  fellowship  and  partly  be 
cause  he  felt  a  keen  sympathy  with  the  preach 
ers  out  there  in  the  good  work  they  were 
doing  for  morality  and  the  amelioration  of 
life.  But  he  had  become  so  unorthodox  in 
his  beliefs  that  one  of  them  threatened  him 
about  this  time  with  a  heresy  prosecution 
because  he  wrote  in  one  of  his  novels  that  it 
is  only  a  theological  quibble  which  denies 
338 


The     Editor    and     the     Man    of    Letters 

to  marriage  an  equal  rank  with  baptism  and 
the  eucharist  as  a  sacrament. 

While  Edward  was  writing  "The  End 
of  the  World,"  he  left  the  work  of  editing 
the  paper  mainly  to  me,  and  when  the  second 
novel  achieved  a  success  approximately  as 
great  as  that  of  "  The  Hoosier  Schoolmas 
ter,"  he  decided  to  give  up  editorial  tasks 
entirely,  and  devote  himself  exclusively  to 
literary  work.  He  resigned  his  place  as 
editor,  and  I  succeeded  him  in  it. 


339 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

The  First  of  Authorship. 

|NDER     Edward's     wise     direction 
Hearth    and    Home    had     by    this 
time   gained   reputation  and  influ 
ence    as    a    publication    of    conse 
quence,  not  only  because  of  the  good  litera 
ture  it  presented,  but  still  more  because  of 
the  ability  of  its  editorial  columns.     In  these 
all  matters  of  importance — all  public  affairs 
of  large  consequence,  all  questions  of  educa 
tion   and   all   matters    that  in  any  vital  way 
concerned   the  welfare   of  the   people   were 
discussed  with  care   and  thought,  not  only 
by  Edward  himself,  and  by  the  able  editorial 
staff  he  had  gathered  about  him,  but  also  by 
other  writers  of  unusual  strength.     Among 
these    contributing   editorial   writers   whose 
writing  was   so  frequent  as  to   render  them 
almost    members  of   the    staff,  were    Helen 

340 


The       First       of       Authorship 

Hunt,  Mrs.  L.  I.  G.  Runkle,  Rebecca  Hard 
ing  Davis,  George  E.  Waring,  Jr.,  Asa  Gray, 
Edward  Everett  Hale,  MaryG.  Humphreys, 
and  several  others. 

It  was  Edward's  practice  to  write  com 
paratively  little  himself  on  the  editorial  page. 
He  rarely  contributed  more  than  one  article 
in  that  department  to  any  one  number.  It 
was  his  conviction  that  a  variety  of  minds  in 
editorial  discussion  is  as  important  as  a  vari 
ety  of  topics.  I  remember  that  when  Theo 
dore  Tilton  set  up  his  paper,  The  Golden 
Age,  and  said  that  he  meant  to  write  the 
whole  editorial  page,  Edward  said  to  him : 
"You'll  score  a  failure,  Theodore.  No  edi 
torial  page  can  live  on  the  gushings  of  one 
man,  however  able  and  however  brilliant  he 

may  be." 

In  the  same  way  he  absolutely  refused  to 
burden  his  mind  with  details  or  to  waste  his 
time  over  them,  after  he  had  got  the  office 
into  a  good  state  of  organization.  He  left 
all  such  things  to  his  managing  editor  and 

341 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

his  subordinates,  and  devoted  himself  ex 
clusively  to  the  larger  work  of  general  direc 
tion. 

As  his  conduct  of  the  paper  had  won 
for  it  recognition  and  influence,  so,  by  the 
time  when  "The  End  of  the  World"  was 
published,  his  novels  had  multiplied  its  cir 
culation  many  times  over.  He  felt  that  he 
had  accomplished  the  task  undertaken.  He 
had  lifted  the  paper  out  of  the  mire  and  set 
it  firmly  on  solid  ground.  He  was  anxious 
to  rid  himself  of  the  harness,  and  he  felt  that 
he  could  do  so  without  fear  that  his  work 
would  be  undone  by  a  weaker  direction  on 
the  part  of  those  whom  he  left  to  take  up 
the  task  where  he  laid  it  down. 

Incidentally,  and  in  illustration  of  the 
difficulties  Edward  had  met  and  overcome,  it 
is  of  interest  to  relate  some  things  that  hap 
pened  during  the  publication  of  the  serials. 

When  "  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster  "  be 
gan  to  appear,  a  member  of  the  publishing 
house  was  sorely  troubled.  He  had  been  a 

342 


The       First       of       Authorship 

bitter  and  vehement  opponent  of  novels  and 
novel  reading.  He  had  published  articles 
of  his  own  in  denunciation  of  fiction  and  in 
rebuke  of  his  friends  in  a  great  publishing 
house  for  putting  forth  literature  of  that 
character.  He  now  began  to  suspect  that 
"The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster"  was  in  fact  a 
novel,  and  he  was  shocked  at  the  thought 
that  it  was  appearing  in  a  periodical  pub 
lished  by  himself.  But  it  was  manifestly 
multiplying  the  circulation  of  that  periodical 
and  changing  its  status  from  that  of  a  losing 
venture  to  that  of  a  paying  property;  so 
under  the  urgent  insistence  of  his  business 
partners  he  reconciled  himself  to  the  situa 
tion. 

But  when  the  story  was  about  to  appear 
in  book  form  Edward  wrote  u  A  Novel  "  as 
sub-title,  and  the  publisher  referred  to  was 
again  in  a  state  of  nervous  agitation.  He 
could  in  no  wise  consent  to  proclaim  himself 
as  a  publisher  of  novels.  In  view  of  the 
large  advance  orders  for  the  book  he  was 

343 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

eager  to  publish  the  novel,  but  he  could  not 
reconcile  himself  to  the  open  admission  that 
it  was  a  novel. 

A  little  later  we  began  publishing  Jean 
Ingelow's  story,  "  Off  the  Skelligs,"  so  that 
the  paper  had  two  serials  running  at  the  same 
time.  One  morning  the  novel-hating  pub 
lisher  called  upon  Edward  with  a  copy  each 
of  Hearth  and  Home  and  one  of  the  most 
sensational  story  papers  then  in  existence. 
He  spread  the  two  out  and  said  to  Edward: 

44  If  there  is  any  difference  between  these 
two  sheets  I  wish  you  would  show  me  what 
it  is.  I  can't  discover  it." 

Edward  heaved  a  little  sigh  of  weari 
ness  and  answered: 

44  If  you  cannot  discover  the  difference 
for  yourself  I  certainly  cannot  teach  you  to 


see  it." 


When  we  began  publishing  "  The  Hoos- 
ier  Schoolmaster"  this  publisher  went  to 
Edward  to  offer  a  suggestion.  The  illustra 
tions  of  the  story  were  surrounded  by  text, 

344 


The        First       of       Authorship 

of  course,  and  where  the  text  happened  to 
include  conversation  the  broken  lines  left 
blank  ends  next  the  picture.  This  publisher 
was  a  stickler  for  what  he  called  "  framing  a 
picture  "  with  its  accompanying  letter-press; 
so  the  happy  thought  seized  him  that  Ed 
ward  might  insert  enough  words  in  each 
broken  line  of  conversation  to  extend  it  to 
the  margin  of  the  illustrations.  He  had 
been  at  pains  to  fill  out  the  lines  with  his 
pencil — making  a  row  of  o's — by  way  of 
showing  how  much  better  the  thing  would 
look  if  done  in  that  way.  I  think  he  never 
quite  forgave  Edward  for  his  refusal  to 
tinker  his  text  in  the  fashion  suggested. 

Upon  resigning  his  editorial  place,  Ed 
ward  agreed  to  write  one  more  serial  story 
for  Hearth  and  Home,  and  he  set  to  work 
upon  it  immediately.  This  time  he  chose 
for  his  theme  the  life  in  Minnesota  as  he  had 
known  it,  and  produced  "  The  Mystery  of 
Metropolisville."  This  was  a  broadening  of 
his  field  somewhat,  and  the  conditions  in 

345 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

which  the  story  was  laid  were  quite  different 
from  those  of  the  two  Hoosier  stories.  In 
the  earlier  novels  he  had  dealt  with  a  life  and 
people  whose  characteristics  were  well  de 
fined.  In  the  new  story  he  must  depict  a  life 
that  was  formless  as  yet,  and  a  people  whose 
gathering  together  in  one  community  was  so 
recent  that  they  could  scarcely  be  thought 
of  as  one  people.  They  were  a  conglomer 
ate  mass  of  humanity,  utter  strangers  to  each 
other.  Coming  from  all  parts  of  the  coun 
try,  as  they  had  done,  they  had  little  in  com 
mon.  There  were  no  well-defined  character 
istics,  no  prevalent  habits,  customs  or  ideas 
that  the  novelist  could  seize  upon.  For  pur 
poses  of  literary  art,  such  a  people  afforded 
far  less  opportunity  than  did  the  Hoosiers. 
Yet  the  new  story  proved  very  successful 
both  as  a  serial  and  in  book  form. 

Edward  was  gravely  dissatisfied  with  it 
when  it  was  done,  and  he  determined  to  write 
no  more  novels  for  a  considerable  time  to 
come. 

346 


The       First       of       Authorship 

He  was  not  permitted  to  carry  this 
determination  into  effect,  for  by  this  time 
editors  and  publishers  were,  metaphorically, 
sitting  on  his  doorsteps  in  eager  rivalry  to 
secure  a  novel  at  his  hands.  In  the  mean 
time  he  had  got  a  little  rest,  and  his  refreshed 
mind  was  subconsciously  at  work  upon  a 
new  theme.  He  had  always  been  impressed 
with  the  heroic  self-sacrifice  of  the  Metho 
dist  circuit  riders,  and  the  picturesqueness 
of  their  life  in  the  early  days  in  the  West. 
The  theme  fascinated  him,  after  the  thought 
of  using  it  in  fiction  had  once  entered  his 
mind.  He  had  known  these  men,  and  he 
had  in  some  measure  shared  their  life.  Their 
inspiration  had  been  his  own  through  years 
of  toil  and  hardship.  His  equipment  was 
perfect  for  the  sympathetic  handling  of  the 
subject.  Accordingly,  he  accepted  an  offer 
made  to  him  by  the  editor  of  The  Christian 
Union,  and  was  soon  at  work  on  "The 
Circuit  Rider,  a  Tale  of  the  Heroic  Age." 

This  story  took  him  back  again  to  the 

347 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

Hoosier  life,  but  with  a  larger  purpose  and 
perhaps  with  a  sounder  conception  of  its 
significance.  The  piece  was  a  new  departure 
in  other  ways.  It  was  more  carefully  wrought 
than  its  predecessors  had  been,  for  the  rea 
son  that  its  author  had  leisure  now,  and  did 
not  write  each  week  to  furnish  "copy"  to 
clamorous  printers  against  a  pre-appointed 
day  of  issue.  It  was  far  more  serious  than 
the  others  had  been,  and  far  more  literary. 
It  gave  proof  of  larger  powers  than  he  had 
shown  before. 

When  "  The  Circuit  Rider  "  was  finished 
Edward  suspended  his  work  in  the  field 
of  fiction,  as  he  had  meant  to  do  before. 
"The  Circuit  Rider"  was  published  in 
1874.  He  did  not  publish  another  novel 
until  1878. 

During  that  time  of  suspension  he 
brought  out  no  book  except  a  little  volume 
of  juvenile  stories.  He  was  writing  a  good 
deal  -for  the  magazines,  however,  both  over 
his  own  name  in  the  general  pages,  and 

348 


The       First       of       Authorship 

anonymously  in  the  editorial  departments. 
He  was  also  compiling  and  editing  two 
sumptuously  published  subscription  books, 
the  one  called  "  Christ  in  Art,"  and  the  other 
"  Christ  in  Literature." 


349 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

The  Christian  Endeavor  Episode. 


*3rr?j 


N  "  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,"  as 
every  reader  of  that  story  remem 
bers,  Ralph  Hartsook  and  Bud 
Means  organized  themselves  into 
the  "Church  of  the  Best  Licks."  It  was 
Edward's  dream  some  day  to  have  charge  of 
such  a  church  in  fact — creedless,  caring 
nothing  for  dogmatic  theology,  exacting  no 
profession  of  faith  of  its  members,  ancLde- 
voting  its  endeavors  solely  to  the  betterment 
of  men  and  women,  the  uplifting  of  those 
who  were  down,  the  encouragement  of  those 
who  despaired,  the  strengthening  of  the 
weak  and  the  amelioration  of  life  in  every 
way  possible/ 

In  the  autumn  of  1874  the   opportunity 
to  realize  this  dream  came  to  him.     He  was 
asked    to   take    charge   of  the  Lee  Avenue 
350 


The    Christian    Endeavor     Episode 

Congregational  Church  in  Brooklyn.  He 
frankly  stated  his  condition  of  mind.  He 
could  not  meet  the  requirements  of  any 
orthodox  council,  nor  would  he  on  any  ac 
count  take  charge  of  a  church  which  imposed 
any  creed  upon  its  members  or  exacted  any 
profession  of  faith  at  their  hands. 

The  church  accepted  his  terms,  aban 
doned  its  ecclesiastical  relations,  and  changed 
its  name  to  The  Church  of  Christian  En 
deavor,  a  phrase  which  Edward  devised  as  a 
dignified  equivalent  of  The  Church  of  the 
Best  Licks. 

For  four  or  five  years  he  carried  on 
this  philanthropic  work  with  enthusiasm. 
He  was  mightily  supported  in  it  by  other 
strong  men  whose  sympathy  with  Christian 
Endeavor  found  expression  in  tireless  work. 
The  membership  of  the  church  grew  rapidly, 
and  its  congregations  were  swelled  to  a  multi 
tude.  Many  of  those  who  labored  in  this 
cause  of  uplifting  were  men  and  women  of 
orthodox  belief.  Indeed  the  majority  of 
351 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

the  members  were  persons  of  that  kind ;  for 
neither  the  church  nor  its  pastor  offered  the 
smallest  objection  to  any  one's  faith,  what 
ever  it  might  be.  They  insisted  only  that 
the  church  should  itself  set  up  no  creed 
standards  in  its  organized  capacity.  Every 
member  was  free  to  believe  as  he  pleased, 
so  long  as  he  stood  ready  to  aid  the  church's 
work  of  human  betterment.  One  day  a 
Quaker  family  applied  to  Edward  for  admis 
sion.  They  frankly  said  that  if  it  were 
required  that  they  should  be  baptized,  they 
would  submit  themselves  to  the  ordinance, 
but  to  them  it  would  be  an  entirely  meaning 
less  form.  Edward  laid  the  case  before  the 
church,  declaring  his  own  conviction  that 
baptism  ought  not  to  be  required  as  a  con 
dition  of  membership,  and  the  church  voted, 
without  a  dissenting  voice,  to  accept  the 
Quakers  without  any  requirement  as  to  forms 
and  ceremonies. 

Some  Unitarians,  and  many  persons  who 
had   never  formulated   their  beliefs  even  in 
352 


The    Christian    Endeavor     Episode 

their  own  minds,  united  with  the  church  and 
aided  earnestly  in  its  work.  But  in  the  main 
its  members  were  persons  of  orthodox  be 
liefs,  who  were  liberal  enough  in  spirit  to  see 
no  reason  why  they  should  exact  like  beliefs 
on  the  part  of  others  as  a  condition  of  a 
harmonious  working  together  for  good. 

It  was  no  part  of  Edward's  purpose  to 
win  anybody  away  from  his  faith.  He  made 
no  war  upon  any  man's  creed.  He  made  no 
effort  to  induce  any  other  to  accept  his  own 
views,  or  to  think  as  he  did  on  religious  sub 
jects.  He  never  discussed  such  things  in 
the  pulpit  or  elsewhere.  He  simply  did  not 
care  for  creeds,  or  in  any  way  concern  him 
self  with  them.  He  was  not  at  all  an  aggres 
sive  apostle  of  liberalism  in  theological  be 
lief;  he  never  discussed  that  subject;  he 
pleaded  only  for  liberality  in  endeavors  to 
help  those  who  needed  help  and  to  better 
human  conditions  in  every  way  possible. 

He  had  an  enthusiastic  Sunday-school, 
outnumbering  any  other  in  Brooklyn,  and  he 
353 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

devised  many  ingenious  ways  in  which  to  inter 
est  the  children.  He  secured  the  assistance 
of  his  friends  among  orthodox  clergymen 
and  laymen,  with  now  and  then  some  one 
who  had  no  church  relations  whatever,  and 
induced  them  to  come  to  his  Sunday-school 
and  talk  to  the  children. 

He  built  up  a  library  in  the  church, 
contributing  liberally  to  it  himself,  and  in 
ducing  all  his  friends  to  contribute  either 
money  or  books. 

He  organized  a  society  of  the  young 
men  for  the  perfectly  free  discussion  of  sub 
jects  of  practical  human  interest.  Into  this 
society  he  had  no  trouble  in  drawing  a  large 
number  of  workingmen  of  active  minds,  who 
discussed  there  questions  of  tariff,  trades 
unionism,  the  relations  of  capital  and  labor, 
and  whatever  else  they  were  interested  in  as 
matters  practically  affecting  their  welfare  in 
the  world. 

In  brief,  this  was  a  church  of  the  Best 
Licks,  to  which  Abou  Ben  Adhem  would 
354 


The    Christian    Endeavor     Episode 

have  been  welcomed  as  a  typical  representa 
tive  of  the  prevailing  spirit. 

Its  conduct  and  the  guidance  of  its  under 
takings  involved  ceaseless  labor  on  Edward's 
part.  It  was  labor  joyfully  given,  but  it 
enormously  overtaxed  his  meagre  strength. 
After  four  or  five  years  of  it  his  nervous 
system  completely  broke  down,  and  in  1879 
he  resigned  his  charge,  thus  finally  quitting 
the  ministry. 

He  sailed  with  his  family  for  Europe 
immediately,  intending  to  remain  there  for  a 
prolonged  period.  But  before  going  he 
told  me  what  I  had  already  guessed,  namely, 
that  the  strain  which  had  done  more  than  all 
else  to  bring  on  his  collapse,  was  not  that  of 
ceaseless  work,  but  that  of  a  mind  ill  at  ease. 
When  he  assumed  charge  of  that  church  he 
had  indeed  lost  his  belief  in  dogmatic  the 
ology,  but  he  retained  enough  of  faith  to 
enable  him  to  preach  acceptably,  with  a  little 
care.  During  the  four  years  or  more  of  his 
pastorate,  through  reading,  study,  and  ear- 
355 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

nest  thought,  even  this  small  share  of  faith 
had  slipped  away  from  him,  until  at  the 
last  he  frankly  said  to  me,  something  like 
this: 

u  There  isn't  a  shred  or  a  raveling  of 
belief  in  the  supernatural  left  in  me.  How 
can  I  go  on  preaching,  when  in  doing  so  I 
seem,  to  others  at  least,  to  profess  what  I  no 
longer  believe  ?  For  the  last  year  I  have  had 
to  study  carefully  every  word  I  have  spoken 
from  the  pulpit,  lest  I  use  terms  that  might 
imply  a  faith  which  I  have  not,  and  thus, 
while  preaching  morality,  be  guilty  of  an  im 
morality  on  my  own  account.  It  has  been  a 
terrible  strain,  a  sore  conflict,  and  my  health 
has  given  way  under  it.  I  have  wanted  to 
go  on  with  this  work,  because  of  the  great 
good  it  is  doing  to  others.  If  it  could  have 
been  completely  secularized,  and  so  stripped 
of  all  appearance  of  a  religious  effort,  I 
should  have  had  strength  to  continue  it.  As 
it  is,  I  should  have  felt  myself  in  conscience 
bound  to  give  it  up,  even  if  my  strength  had 
356 


The    Christian    Endeavor     Episode 

held  out.  My  only  hope  is  that  some  one 
may  be  found  who  can  carry  it  on  in  the 
form  and  name  of  religion,  without  having 
to  compromise  with  his  conscience,  as  I 
should  have  to  do  with  mine." 

Thus  ended  another  chapter  of  Edward 
Eggleston's  life. 

From  that  hour  forward  he  never  en 
tered  a  pulpit.  He  had  already  withdrawn 
from  the  Methodist  church,  as  well  as  from 
its  ministry,  and  while  he  never  antagonized 
the  faith  he  had  long  and  conscientiously 
held,  he  never  concealed  the  fact  that  he  no 
longer  accepted  any  part  of  it. 


357 


CHAPTER   XX. 

The  Historical  Work  of  Twenty  Years. 

|HEN  he  sailed  for  Europe  in  1879 
Edward's  means  were  scant.  Dur 
ing  the  four  or  five  years  given  to 
the  Christian  Endeavor  enterprise 
he  had  devoted  practically  all  of  his  salary 
to  the  work  in  which  he  felt  so  vital  an  inter 
est.  In  the  meanwhile  he  had  depended  for 
the  support  of  his  family  upon  his  copy 
rights  and  upon  his  labors  with  the  pen. 
He  wrote  a  good  deal  for  the  magazines,  at 
rates  of  pay  which  were  then  deemed  very 
liberal,  and  in  1878  he  brought  out  a  new 
novel,  "  Roxy  " — his  first  book  in  four  years. 
uRoxy"was  founded  upon  an  occur 
rence  that  had  been  known  to  both  of  us 
in  youth,  an  occurrence  which  brought 
out  the  unconscious  heroism  of  a  good, 
simple-minded  woman,  in  humble  life,  in 
358 


•s 


The    Historical    Work    of    Twenty    Years 

a  way  that  would  be  impossible  to  most 
women. 

Curiously  enough,  one  newspaper  critic 
at  least,  and  perhaps  others,  criticised  the 
story  as  immoral,  because  it  hinged  upon  a 
sinful  incident.  The  criticism  was  as  appli 
cable  to  Hawthorne's  "  Scarlet  Letter"  as  to 
"  Roxy."  It  utterly  ignored  the  fact  that 
the  sinful  incident  was  handled  with  the  ex 
treme  of  delicacy,  and  with  the  highest  moral 
purpose  and  effect.  To  be  consistent  the 
critic  must  have  condemned  all  preachers 
for  mentioning  theft,  murder,  robbery  or 
any  other  sin  for  the  purpose  of  rebuking  it. 

Edward  knew  how  to  live  comfortably 
at  small  cost,  whether  in  Europe  or  at  home, 
and  so  he  made  no  use  of  a  generosity  which 
was  at  this  time  extended  to  him.  Roswell 
Smith,  publisher  and  chief  owner  of  Scribner's 
Monthly — afterwards  The  Century  Magazine 
— had  become  one  of  Edward's  most  devoted 
friends.  He  had  made  so  great  a  success 
of  the  magazine  that  his  fortune  was  now 
359 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

ample,  and,  with  one  of  those  generous  im 
pulses  which  always  governed  his  conduct, 
he  went  to  Edward  one  day,  just  before  the 
date  of  sailing,  and  bade  him  be  at  ease 
during  his  stay  abroad.  "  My  purse  is  abso 
lutely  at  your  disposal,"  he  said.  "  Draw 
upon  me  for  whatever  money  you  need, 
whenever  you  want  it,  and  pray  don't  think 
of  the  sum,  whatever  it  may  be,  as  a  debt  to 
be  repaid.  I  shall  consider  it  only  a  privi 
lege  if  you  allow  me  to  help  you  regain  your 
strength.  I  want  to  endow  your  work  for  the 
public's  sake,  and  you  must  let  me  do  so." 

Edward  was  much  too  independent  of 
spirit  to  accept  such  an  offer,  though  he 
knew  that  it  was  made  with  the  utmost  sin 
cerity.  But  he  never  forgot  the  generosity 
of  it.  "  There  are  not  many  such  men  as 
Roswell  Smith,"  he  used  to  say,  "  in  this 
money-grubbing  world  of  ours." 

Edward's  first  concern  in  Europe  was  to 
get  well  by  rest.     For  a  time  he  did  no  work 
— not  even  reading  a  book  for  entertainment. 
360 


The    Historical    Work    of    Twenty    Years 

He  went  up  into  the  Swiss  mountains  and 
lived  there  for  a  time  among  the  peasants, 
in  the  district  from  which  our  Vevay  Swiss 
people  had  emigrated.  He  found  among 
them  relatives  and  near  friends  of  the  Vevay 
settlers,  and  they  never  tired  of  questioning 
him  concerning  the  American  Vevay  and  its 
people. 

He  lived  out  of  doors  during  his  wak 
ing  hours,  sometimes  going  into  the  vine 
yards  and  helping  in  the  work  of  grape  gath 
ering.  On  these  occasions  the  stout  peasant 
women  would  watch  carefully  for  the  filling 
of  his  basket,  and  when  it  was  full  one  of 
them  would  hurriedly  snatch  it  away  and 
carry  it  to  the  receptacle  into  which  all  the 
baskets  must  be  emptied.  They  were  deter 
mined  that  "the  dear  monsieur"  should  do 
no  heavy  work.  When  the  hour  came  for 
quitting  the  vineyard  the  peasants  would 
line  themselves  up  in  two  rows  and  ask  him 
to  pass  through  and  walk  in  front  of  them. 
When  he  wandered  along  a  road,  accom- 

361 


The    First     of    The     Hoosiers 

panied  by  his  blonde-haired  little  grand 
daughter,  the  peasants  would  select  the  finest 
clusters  of  grapes,  arrange  them  upon  leaves 
and  present  them  to  her  with  positive  rever 
ence  for  a  child  whom  they  called  "the  little 
American  angel,"  because  of  her  fair  face 
and  blonde  locks. 

After  a  time  Edward  went  to  Paris, 
London  and  Venice,  living  in  each  of  those 
cities  for  months  at  a  time.  It  was  in  Venice 
that  he  wrote  "The  Hoosier  School  Boy," 
and  later  "The  Graysons."  He  used  to  say 
that  it  interested  him  mightily,  after  living 
all  day  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  great  prim 
itive  West,  where  the  scene  of  his  story  was 
laid,  to  pass  almost  instantly  into  the  historic 
surroundings  of  Venice,  which  he  could  do 
merely  by  throwing  down  his  pen  and  going 
out  of  doors.  One  can  easily  understand 
the  fascination  a  thought  of  that  kind  must 
have  had  for  an  imaginative  man. 

Apart  from  the  recovery  of  his  health, 
the  most  important  result  of  his  residence  in 

362 


The    Historical    Work    of    Twenty    Years 

Europe  was  the  suggestion  that  came  to  him 
there  as  to  his  future  work.  It  was  from  the 
reflective  calm  of  that  life  that  he  wrote  to 
me,  about  the  beginning  of  the  year  1880, 
telling  me  of  his  newly  formed  plan. 

"  I  am  going  to  write  a  series  of  vol 
umes,"  he  wrote,  "which  together  shall  con 
stitute  a  History  of  Life  in  the  United  States 
— not  a  history  of  the  United  States,  bear  in 
mind,  but  a  history  of  life  there,  the  life  of 
the  people,  the  sources  of  their  ideas  and 
habits,  the  course  of  their  development  from 
beginnings.  These  beginnings  will  be  care 
fully  studied  in  the  first  volume.  Beyond 
that  my  plans  for  the  ordering  of  the  mate 
rial  are  not  fully  formed.  It  will  be  a  work 
designed  to  answer  the  questions  'How?' 
and  'Whence?'  and  'Why?'  All  this  will 
require  a  great  deal  of  research,  but  I  stand 
ready  to  give  ten  years  of  my  life  to  the  task, 
if  necessary." 

In  the  event  the  research  required 
proved  to  be  much  greater  even  than  he  had 

363 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

panied  by  his  blonde-haired  little  grand 
daughter,  the  peasants  would  select  the  finest 
clusters  of  grapes,  arrange  them  upon  leaves 
and  present  them  to  her  with  positive  rever 
ence  for  a  child  whom  they  called  "the  little 
American  angel,"  because  of  her  fair  face 
and  blonde  locks. 

After  a  time  Edward  went  to  Paris, 
London  and  Venice,  living  in  each  of  those 
cities  for  months  at  a  time.  It  was  in  Venice 
that  he  wrote  "The  Hoosier  School  Boy," 
and  later  "  The  Graysons."  He  used  to  say 
that  it  interested  him  mightily,  after  living 
all  day  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  great  prim 
itive  West,  where  the  scene  of  his  story  was 
laid,  to  pass  almost  instantly  into  the  historic 
surroundings  of  Venice,  which  he  could  do 
merely  by  throwing  down  his  pen  and  going 
out  of  doors.  One  can  easily  understand 
the  fascination  a  thought  of  that  kind  must 
have  had  for  an  imaginative  man. 

Apart  from  the  recovery  of  his  health, 
the  most  important  result  of  his  residence  in 

362 


The    Historical    Work    of    Twenty    Years 

Europe  was  the  suggestion  that  came  to  him 
there  as  to  his  future  work.  It  was  from  the 
reflective  calm  of  that  life  that  he  wrote  to 
me,  about  the  beginning  of  the  year  1880, 
telling  me  of  his  newly  formed  plan. 

"  I  am  going  to  write  a  series  of  vol 
umes,"  he  wrote,  "which  together  shall  con 
stitute  a  History  of  Life  in  the  United  States 
— not  a  history  of  the  United  States,  bear  in 
mind,  but  a  history  of  life  there,  the  life  of 
the  people,  the  sources  of  their  ideas  and 
habits,  the  course  of  their  development  from 
beginnings.  These  beginnings  will  be  care 
fully  studied  in  the  first  volume.  Beyond 
that  my  plans  for  the  ordering  of  the  mate 
rial  are  not  fully  formed.  It  will  be  a  work 
designed  to  answer  the  questions  'How?' 
and  'Whence?'  and  'Why?'  All  this  will 
require  a  great  deal  of  research,  but  I  stand 
ready  to  give  ten  years  of  my  life  to  the  task, 
if  necessary." 

In  the  event  the  research  required 
proved  to  be  much  greater  even  than  he  had 
363 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

anticipated.  He  gave  not  ten,  but  twenty 
years  to  the  work,  and  died  at  last  leaving  it 
scarcely  more  than  begun.  The  two  vol 
umes  that  were  published — "  The  Beginners 
of  a  Nation"  and  "The  Transit  of  Civiliza 
tion,"  are  the  only  direct  fruits  we  have  or 
ever  shall  have  of  that  twenty  years  of  cease 
less  and  scholarly  study.  But  these  alone 
are  well  worth  all  that  they  cost  of  toilsome 
research,  while  the  incidental  fruit  of  his 
labors  is  perhaps  of  even  greater  value  to 
the  public.  These  are  found  in  those  school 
histories  and  the  like,  in  which  he  fairly 
revolutionized  the  teaching  of  history  in 
schools,  and  devised  new  methods  so  good 
that  other  writers  of  school  history  have 
felt  it  necessary  to  borrow  them — sometimes 
copying  so  closely  as  to  excite  wonder  and 
invite  criticism. 

Having    conceived     this     undertaking, 

Edward  set  to  work  upon  it  at  once.     For 

years  he  studied  in  the  British  Museum,  the 

French   National  Library,  and   in  many  rich 

364 


The    Historical    Work    of    Twenty    Years 

private  libraries  in  England  and  France 
which  were  generously  thrown  open  to  him. 
Then  he  returned  to  America,  and  set  him 
self  to  the  task  of  exhausting  the  resources 
of  the  public  and  private  libraries  in  this 
country — the  Astor  and  Lenox  in  New  York, 
the  Boston  Public  Library  and  the  Athenaeum 
in  Boston,  the  Congressional  Library  in 
Washington,  many  college  collections  and  a 
multitude  of  private  libraries,  besides  a  great 
number  of  manuscript  letters  and  records 
preserved  in  the  homes  of  old  colonial  fam 
ilies. 

In  prosecuting  his  researches  he  made 
many  interesting  "finds,"  including  one  very 
notable  one.  This  was  a  manuscript  account 
of  Bacon's  Rebellion,  written  by  Nathaniel 
Bacon  himself.  Edward  came  upon  it  by 
accident  one  day  while  looking  through  a 
wagon  load  of  unsorted  and  unexamined 
manuscripts  in  the  British  Museum. 

One  thing  that  made  Edward's  researches 
time-consuming  was  his  propensity  to  be- 

365 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

lack  of  reverence  for  the  past  and  its  people. 
But  it  was  a  simple  piece  of  truth  telling,  by 
one  who  had  taken  pains  to  find  out  the  truth 
and  whose  sole  purpose  it  was  to  reveal  it. 

Parts  of  the  book — rather  more  than  a 
dozen  chapters  of  it,  each  complete  as  a 
study,  were  published  from  time  to  time  in 
the  Century  Magazine,  but  it  was  not  until 
late  in  the  nineties  that  "  The  Beginners  of 
a  Nation  "  appeared  in  book  form.  It  was 
followed  a  year  or  two  later  by  the  second 
volume,  entitled  "The  Transit  of  Civiliza 
tion." 

With  this  second  work,  fascinating  as  its 
interest  is,  Edward  was  gravely  dissatisfied. 
It  was  not  what  he  had  intended  it  to  be.  It 
was,  as  he  said,  born  before  its  time.  That 
is  to  say,  finding  that  his  health  was  failing, 
he  feared  that  death  might  come  to  him  be 
fore  he  could  complete  the  book  in  the  form 
and  with  the  fulness  he  had  intended  to  give 
it.  In  order  that  his  years  of  work  upon  it, 
and  the  rich  results  of  his  seventeenth  cen- 

3G3 


'ihe    Historical    Work    of    Twenty    Years 

tury  explorations  might  not  be  wholly  lost  to 
scholarship  and  history,  he  decided  to  put 
the  volume  into  such  shape  as  he  had  strength 
left  to  give  it,  and  thus  to  publish  it. 

I  am  frequently  asked  by  letter  and  in 
person,  whether  it  may  not  be  possible  for 
some  other  hand  to  write  the  other  volumes 
of  his  u  History  of  Life  in  the  United  States," 
using  the  rich  store  of  materials  he  had  col 
lected.  I  am  obliged  to  answer  no.  The 
greater  part  of  his  materials  he  carried  only 
in  his  own  memory.  The  notes  that  would 
have  enabled  him,  had  he  lived,  to  do  the 
work  intended,  are  not  of  a  kind  to  be  used 
by  any  other.  They  were  scarcely  more  than 
mnemonic  hints  and  suggestions.  What 
ever  their  value  might  have  been  to  him,  they 
would  have  no  fruitfulness  of  suggestion  to 
any  other  mind. 

But  the  work  thus  lost  was  not  wholly 
without  profit  to  the  public.  It  was  as  an 
outcome  of  that  work  that  he  wrote  his 
school  histories  and  the  u  Household  History 

369 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 


of  the  United  States."  Something  has  al 
ready  been  said  in  this  chapter  with  respect 
to  the  good  achieved  by  the  publication  of 
these  smaller  works,  not  only  through  their 
use  in  schools  and  families  throughout  the 
country,  but  indirectly  through  the  radical 
changes  they  compelled  in  the  methods  of 
school  history-writing  on  the  part  of  other 
workers  in  that  field,  and  in  the  system  of 
teaching  the  history  of  our  country  to  its 
youth. 

In  those  later  years,  when  he  felt  that 
his  working  power  was  failing  and  realized 
that  he  could  never  complete  the  great  work 
of  his  life,  he  felt  a  keen  regret  of  course ; 
but  he  confronted  the  necessity  of  leaving 
his  task  unfinished  with  a  calm  philosophy 
and  was  content. 


370 


D 


CHAPTER   XXI. 

The  Light  Goes  Out. 

URING  his  stay  in  Europe,  and  after 
his  return  to  this  country,  Edward 
diligently  explored  the  book-shops 
and  attended  book  sales  in  search 
of  old  and  rare  books  in  many  languages, 
on  subjects  related  to  his  historical  studies. 
For  the  most  part  these  were  books  not  to 
be  found  in  public  libraries  anywhere. 

He  had  built  a  home  for  his  books  at 
Lake  George,  a  structure  of  artistic  beauty, 
with  walls  made  of  the  native  stone — trap 
rock — which  always  breaks  in  a  way  to  show 
at  least  one  perfectly  straight  side.  He  now 
added  to  this  another  building  of  like  con 
struction,  as  a  house  for  himself,  the  two 
structures  standing  a  little  way  apart  and  on 
different  levels,  but  being  connected  by  a 
slate-roofed  covered  way. 
371 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

Here  he  made  his  home,  except  that 
during  the  colder  months  of  the  year  he 
occupied  an  apartment  in  New  York.  He 
traveled  a  good  deal  at  this  time,  partly  in 
search  of  materials,  and  partly  for  the  sake 
of  his  wife's  health,  which  was  failing. 
During  one  of  their  trips  to  the  South  she 
died  in  February,  1889,  and  the  loneliness  of 
his  life  was  relieved  only  by  hard  and  some 
times  excessive  work. 

In  October,  1891,  he  married  his  second 
wife,  Frances  E.  Goode,  of  Madison,  In 
diana,  a  distant  relative  whom  he  had  known 
from  her  childhood.  She  survives  him. 

After  his  second  marriage  he  established 
a  little  home  in  Madison  for  occasional 
occupancy,  in  order  that  his  wife  might  pass 
some  months  of  every  year  near  her  own 
people.  His  permanent  residence  was  still 
at  Lake  George,  but,  besides  spending  some 
time  in  Madison  each  year,  he  frequently 
lived  for  months  at  a  time  in  Washington  or 
New  York,  and  toward  the  end  he  spent  the 

372 


The        Light        Goes        Out 

worst  months  of  each  winter  in  the  far 
South.  Fortunately  his  books  had  placed 
him  financially  in  easy  circumstances,  so 
that  he  was  free  to  go  and  come  at  will,  and 
live  wherever  he  found  it  most  comfort 
able.  In  the  summer  he  was  always  at  his 
Lake  George  home,  where  he  passed  all  his 
waking  hours  among  his  books  or  walking 
through  the  woodlands  of  the  mountains 
round  about.  He  usually  went  to  Lake 
George  in  May,  and  remained  there  until 
the  snow  began  to  fly  in  November  or  De 
cember. 

All  this  time  he  was  at  work  upon  his 
history,  but  he  found  time  to  produce  a 
number  of  school  books,  besides  his  "  House 
hold  History,"  and  one  novel,  "The  Faith 
Doctor,"  which  appeared  in  1891.  This  was 
the  last  novel  he  ever  wrote,  and  the  only 
one  the  scene  of  which  he  laid  elsewhere  than 
in  the  West.  It  deals  with  New  York  life, 
and  for  explanation  of  this  departure  from 
his  usual  practice,  he  urged  that,  after  all,  he 
373 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

had  lived  in  New  York  longer  than  he  had 
ever  lived  anywhere  else,  and  knew  New 
York  life  better  than  he  did  that  of  any  other 
part  of  the  country.  His  theme  gave  him 
opportunity  also  to  study  and  depict  certain 
very  interesting  phases  of  character,  as  af 
fected  by  religious  beliefs  and  enthusiasms. 
His  heroine,  around  whom  the  story  is  written, 
was  drawn  with  a  peculiarly  strong  and  deft 
hand,  all  the  more  so  because,  in  her  enthusi 
asm,  her  conscientiousness  and  her  blind, 
self-sacrificing  devotion  to  duty  as  she  under 
stood  it,  she  very  closely  resembled  himself 
in  his  youth  and  young  manhood.  He  knew 
what  Agatha  thought  and  felt  at  every  emo 
tional  crisis,  because  he  had  thought  and  felt 
in  the  same  way  once  upon  a  time. 

Two  years  later  he  published  a  collection 
of  short  stories  entitled  "Duffels,"  and  that 
was  the  last  excursion  he  ever  made  into  the 
field  of  fiction,  great  or  small.  Indeed  a 
great  and  growing  distaste  for  fiction  came 
upon  him  about  this  time.  When  a  few 
374 


The        Light        Goes        Out 

years  before  his  death,  I  wrote  a  boys'  story 
called  "The  Last  of  the  Flatboats,"  and 
made  one  of  the  characters  a  close,  almost 
photographic  portrait  of  himself  as  he  had 
been  in  boyhood,  he  lovingly  listened  while 
his  wife  read  the  story  to  him.  But,  a  little 
later,  when  one  of  my  novels  was  published, 
he  said  to  me : 

"I  enjoyed  the  boys'  book,  Geordie,  but 
I  can't  listen  to  the  reading  of  a  novel,  even 
though  you  did  write  it." 

About  three  years  before  his  death  he 
was  stricken  suddenly  one  day  with  blind 
ness  in  one  eye.  He  believed  this  to  be  a 
slight  stroke  of  apoplexy,  as  subsequent 
events  clearly  showed  that  it  was.  But  the 
oculists  whom  he  consulted  at  the  time  made 
a  different  diagnosis,  and  after  a  little  while 
the  sight  came  back  to  the  eye  affected. 

After  that  there  was  a  slow  but  steady 
and  continuous  decline  of  strength  and  ac 
tivity.  Edward's  mind  remained  clear  and 
his  thinking  vigorous,  but  there  was  some 
.375 


The     First     of     The     Hoosiers 

loss  of  memory,  some  forgetfulness  of  words, 
and  now  and  then  some  confusion  of  things 
remembered.  The  gout  with  which  he  had 
suffered  a  good  deal,  seemed  to  grow  steadily 
less  severe,  and  his  physical  health  was  excel 
lent.  But  he  walked  with  some  difficulty 
and  lost  the  flexibility  of  his  muscles.  It 
was  sometimes  difficult  for  him  to  seat  him 
self  or  to  rise  from  a  chair. 

He  continued  to  work  a  little  now  and 
then,  both  upon  his  "  History  of  Life  "  and 
upon  a  school  book  that  is  not  yet  published, 
which  was  the  very  last  literary  work  he  ever 
attempted. 

In  the  spring  of  1902  he  grew  so  much 
worse  that  he  entirely  ceased  to  attempt  work 
of  any  kind.  He  found  it  distressing  to 
write  a  letter,  or  even  a  note,  yet  he  suffered 
no  pain  of  any  kind,  enjoyed  converse  with  his 
friends,  and  seemed  altogether  happy  in  his 
Lake  George  home.  His  cottage  and  mine 
— a  few  hundred  yards  away — were  the  only 
ones  occupied  so  early  in  the  year.  One 
376 


The        Light        Goes        Out 

afternoon,  having  finished  my  writing  for 
the  day,  I  decided  to  go  fishing  for  an  hour 
or  so,  and,  seeing  me  preparing,  Edward 
called  to  me,  saying  that  he  would  go  with 
me.  He  had  quite  ceased  to  go  on  the 
water,  because  he  was  suffering,  not  only 
with  a  muscular  stiffness  which  rendered  it 
well  nigh  impossible  for  him  to  get  into  or  out 
of  a  boat,  but  with  a  giddiness  which  ren 
dered  boating  disagreeable.  But  I  happened 
to  have  a  broad,  flat-bottomed  fishing  boat 
of  the  sharpie  type,  with  a  broad  stern  and 
extraordinary  steadiness  in  the  water,  and 
Edward  thought  he  might  manage  to  get 
into  that.  I  backed  the  stern  up  against  a 
pier  and  he  succeeded  in  getting  in. 

As  we  fished,  Edward  presently  dropped 
his  rod  overboard  and  the  heavy  reel  quickly 
carried  it  to  the  bottom.  He  laughed  at  the 
incident,  saying: 

"  I  didn't  know  I  was  letting  go  my  hold. 
Somehow  I  don't  always  know  what  my 
hands  are  doing." 

377 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

I  offered  him  the  use  of  my  rod,  but  he 
declined,  saying: 

"  I  really  don't  want  to  fish.  I  only  want 
to  sit  here  in  a  boat  with  you  this  once  more 
before  I*  die." 

I  insisted  that  he  mustn't  talk  about 
dying,  whereupon  he  said: 

uOh,  don't  imagine  that  I'm  bothering 
about  that.  I  know  I  have  only  a  brief  time 
to  live  now,  and  I'm  not  going  to  spend  that 
little  while  in  worrying.  Whenever  death 
wants  me,  I  am  ready.  I've  'had  my  fling' 
and  the  game  is  nearly  over.  The  doctors  say 
differently,  but  I  know  my  own  condition  far 
better  than  they  do.  I  am  afflicted  almost 
constantly  with  what  they  call  festination — a 
tendency  to  run  when  I  walk,  to  keep  from 
falling  forward.  One  symptom  which  usually 
accompanies  festination  is  lacking  in  my  case, 
and  because  of  its  absence  the  doctors  insist 
that  I  have  no  festination  at  all.  Neverthe 
less,  I  have  it  very  markedly.  I  have  to  run 
when  I  try  to  walk,  and  I  have  the  great- 

378 


The        Light        Goes        Out 

est    difficulty  to  keep  from  falling  forward 
on  my  face. 

"No,  Geordie,  I  have  not  long  to  live, 
but  I  am  very  happy.  I'm  glad  to  be  with 
you  in  your  boat  to-day,  for  it  is  my  last  time 
on  the  water.  Do  you  know,  the  first  time 
I  was  ever  in  a  row-boat,  you  rowed  me, 
sturdy  little  fellow  that  you  were?  It  pleases 
me  to  have  you  for  my  oarsman  this  last 
time." 

I  was  at  this  time  staying  quite  alone  in 
my  cottage  and  taking  my  meals  at  the  coun 
try  post-office  nearby,  my  family  being  de 
tained  in  town  by  my  son's  examinations.  A 
day  or  two  after  the  boating  incident  Ed 
ward's  wife  begged  me  to  take  all  my  meals 
at  her  house,  saying  that  Edward  seemed 
specially  to  want  me  with  him  as  much  as  pos 
sible.  My  work  was  very  heavy  just  then, 
so  that  except  at  meal-time  it  was  very  diffi 
cult  for  me  to  be  with  him,  but  I  could  do 
this  much  for  his  gratification,  and  I  did  it 
gladly. 

379 


The     First     of    The     Hoosiers 

He  talked  little  at  these  times,  and  never 
with  aggressive  interest  in  his  theme;  but 
his  thinking  seemed  as  clear  as  ever,  and 
his  gentle  humor  enlivened  everything  he 
said. 

One  morning  early  in  June  I  went  to  his 
house  for  breakfast,  and  found  him  in  a  dis 
tressing  condition.  He  had  been  stricken 
with  a  cerebral  hemorrhage  during  the  night, 
and  was  now  nearly  helpless.  During  the 
next  two  months  he  continued  in  this  state. 
He  could  walk  a  little ;  he  could  come  to  the 
table  with  a  little  help,  and  now  and  then  he 
would  ask  to  be  helped  into  his  library, 
where  he  would  sit  and  look  lovingly  at  his 
books.  But  he  could  talk  scarcely  at  all. 
He  could  utter  only  brief,  fragmentary  sen 
tences,  and  that  with  difficulty. 

Finally,  near  the  end  of  August,  he  was 
stricken  again,  and  for  eight  days  after  that 
he  lay  unconscious.  Then  came  the  end,  on 
the  4th  of  September. 

A  brilliant  mind  had  gone  out.  A  life 
380 


The        Light        Goes        Out 

of  extraordinary  activity  had  ceased  to  be. 
A  heart  that  had  been  always  loving  and 
generous,  a  heart  that  had  pulsed  with  all 
human  sympathy,  and  with  high  enthusiasm 
in  the  service  of  others,  had  grown  forever 
still. 

He  had  suffered  no  pain  during  all  those 
last  months,  and  had  known  no  worry.  The 
tender  and  judicious  ministry  of  a  nobly  de 
voted  wife  was  his  at  every  hour  of  every 
day.  He  had  gone  to  his  death  as  in  youth 
he  had  planned  to  do,  "  like  one  who  wraps 
the  drapery  of  his  couch  about  him,  and  lies 
down  to  pleasant  dreams." 

I  think  I  do  not  suffer  my  affection  to 
warp  my  judgment  when  I  say  that  Edward 
Eggleston  was  the  best  man  I  ever  knew. 
From  beginning  to  end  of  his  life  he  not 
only  never  did  a  wrong  to  any  human  being, 
but  he  never  failed  to  render  any  service  in 
his  power  to  every  one  who  had  need  of  it, 
no  matter  at  what  cost  of  self-sacrifice.  He 
lived  always  for  others,  never  for  himself. 

381 


The     First     of    The     Hoosicrs 

His  generosity  was  not  so  much  a  habit  as 
an  integral  part  of  his  character,  and  it  needed 
no  large  occasion,  no  strong  appeal  to  call 
it  into  activity.  He  was  generous  in  small 
ways  as  well  as  large.  He  was  especially 
generous  in  his  judgments  of  others,  whose 
wrong  doings  he  looked  upon  as  the  results 
of  a  weakness  which  they  could  not  help, 
rather  than  as  faults  for  which  they  should 
be  held  responsible. 

Never  once  in  all  his  life,  I  am  firmly 
persuaded,  did  Edward  Eggleston  give  just 
offence  to  his  own  exceedingly  sensitive 
conscience ;  never  did  he  consciously  do  a 
wrong  or  omit  to  discharge  a  duty. 

So  much  I  take  the  liberty  of  saying  in 
absolute  sincerity  to  those  thousands  who 
knew  this  man  only  through  his  writings. 
To  those  who  knew  him  personally,  nothing 
need  be  said  in  praise  of  his  nobility  of  char 
acter. 

THE   END. 


382 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

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